Movie Review: Frankenstein

Netflix seems to feel an inexplicable level of contempt for movie theaters, generally only giving a few of their films the bare minimum number of screenings needed to qualify for Academy Award nominations before sending them to streaming. Sure, this is convenient and cost-effective for their subscribers, as even with the service’s ever-rising subscription rates it is still cheaper and easier than heading to the local cinema, if you even still have one. And that a very large portion of the content they produce is not very good would also serve as an argument against bothering to send it out to multiplexes. But their willingness to give auteur directors large quantities of cash to realize their creative visions means that they do produce some genuinely great films that deserve to be viewed on as big a screen as possible, and unsurprisingly for anyone who is familiar with director Guillermo del Toro’s work, his latest, an adaptation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is one such film.

Making more use of the original text than the classic 1945 film, del Toro changes it enough to focus more on his usual themes and in doing so has possibly created the definitive adaptation of the story. It begins with a ship led by Captain Anderson (Lars Mikkelsen) trying to get itself unstuck from the Arctic ice in order to continue their quest to the North Pole. A nearby explosion on the ice leads them to discover a severely injured Baron Viktor Frankenstein (Oscar Isaac) and a vicious, hooded Creature (Jacob Elordi). They are able to fend it off, at least temporarily, and get Viktor to safety in the Captain’s quarters, where he begins to relay the tale of how he came to be so far from civilization.

From there, he takes the Captain through his story, beginning with his childhood and the cruelty he experienced at the hand of his father (Charles Dance) and the death of his mother while giving birth to his younger brother. Then we learn of his experiments as an adult to reanimate the dead and how they got him ostracized from the medical community, leading to him being approached with a suspiciously generous offer of financing from arms merchant Henrich Harlander (Christoph Waltz), who happens to be the uncle of his brother William’s (Felix Kammerer) bride-to-be, Lady Elizabeth Harlander (Mia Goth). While he is initially reluctant, he also realizes that he likely doesn’t have much other choice and so accepts the deal, but even though he succeeds at his project, giving life to The Creature, it does not work out as he expected and great tragedy awaits all involved on the winding path to that fateful night in the Arctic.

Del Toro is a true visual stylist, and with a design team including production designer Tamara Deverell and costume designer Kate Hawley he has crafted a stunning world that blends sumptuous historical detail and strikingly fantastic designs, accented by a typically superb Alexandre Desplat score. His idea to cast the objectively attractive Elordi as The Creature is both a bold and logical one, as it makes sense that Frankenstein would be trying to obtain the “best” body parts he could find for his creation. Combined with the actor’s utterly transformative performance it is all too easy to engender sympathy for it.

Elordi may have the showiest role in the cast, but everyone is superb, truly giving life to their characters. Kammerer and Goth are both endearing in their concern for those around them, the latter especially. Isaac nails the thoughtless arrogance of the titular man as he brings about the sort of destruction the type has been known to do throughout history, usually despite the warnings of others. And while Victor Frankenstein is very much the real monster here, Isaac imbues him with enough humanity to avoid being a mere caricature and even worth a modicum of sympathy himself.

Del Toro’s storytelling has long been highly empathetic towards those who are othered by society, which perhaps makes him the perfect filmmaker to tackle this tale, and his script truly drives home its tragic nature. The added layers of familial abuse and the way it can carry through the generations only further deepens the levels of heartbreak one feels by the movie’s end. There are of course also a great many ethical quandaries posed by Frankenstein’s work and its outcome that leave the viewer with much to ponder, but despite the many layers contained within, what one comes away remembering the most is the impression of having been moved and entertained in equal measure by a master filmmaker. If it isn’t the best example of his brand of adult fairy tale it’s only because of how excellent his output has been rather than any shortcoming present here, for Frankenstein as he has assembled it is nearly perfect. ★★★★★