In Frankenstein, Guillermo del Toro amplifies Shelley's morality tale

We have grown up with the Boris Karloff and Christopher Lee versions of Frankenstein wherein the green-hued monster created by the good Dr Frankenstein mostly grunts to strike terror among those that cross his path as well as movie audiences.  Therefore, it is something of a surprise that the latest film incarnation of Mary Shelley’s 1818 Gothic novel, written and directed by Guillermo del Toro, is aesthetically pleasing, visually lush, and morally unequivocal. 

 

The Mexican auteur has made 13 films in his career, beginning 1993 with Cronos in Spanish. He uses fables, fairy tales, and monsters in most of his œuvre to convey a message of salvation in imperfection, with rich visual imagery. He finds “humans ...pedestrian ... monsters more fascinating and pure”.  The many del Toro honours include the 2016 Oscars for best film and best director for The Shape of Water and the 2023 Oscar for the best animated feature Pinocchio.

 

del Toro, long obsessed with Frankenstein, had been preparing to film it for nearly two decades. He finally started it in 2023 and completed it this year. It was shown at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, to much acclaim.  The film takes some liberties with the novel, placing it in Victorian England instead of late eighteenth-century central Europe, but the theme and the spirit remain intact.

 

The plot, briefly, has Baron Victor Frankenstein, an anatomical genius much like father, assembling body parts from cadavers and bringing to life “the Creature” (not named in the book or the film) with jolts of electricity harvested from lightning bolts. Victor is immediately remorseful and tries to destroy the Creature, who escapes.  A cat-and-mouse chase between the two reaches a denouement on board an ice-bound Danish polar-exploration ship in the Arctic.

 

del Toro resorts to a novel narrative device: The first half of the 140-minute film tells Victor’s story, including his intense love for his mother (who dies while giving birth to his brother) and equally hostile relationship with his martinet father.  Victor is ridiculed by his peers for his belief in the possibility of conquering death and creating life in a laboratory but a wealthy arms merchant funds his work for his own ulterior motives.  

 

The second half of the film has the Creature telling his own story (he has learnt to speak and read while acting as an unseen guardian of a poor shepherd family on the highlands).  He talks elegiacally of the utter sloneliness of his existence and begs Victor to create a companion for him.

 

The film is mounted on a lavish scale.  The baron’s castle, his laboratory which is an abandoned and refurbished fort on a hilltop, the shepherds’ cottage, and the ship are all displayed lovingly, with the trademark del Toro hues of blue suffusing the bright daylight scenes and amber highlighting the dark of the night.  “[The] set is real, the costumes are ...fabricated [and] aged by human hands,” said del Toro, for whom no detail is too small to ignore.

 

The acting is superlative.  Oscar Isaac as Victor portrays amply his inner torment before and after his act of creation.  The real star, however, is Jacob Elordi (who was not the original choice) as the Creature.  He towers above all (literally as well, given his almost 2-metre frame).  He is dressed in rags, is given a deathly blue tint to his skin, does not have many lines to speak, but conveys superbly through his largely distorted face the anguish of his character, abandoned by his creator and feared and detested by all who see him. Mia Goth shines in a double cameo appearance as Victor’s mother and his brother’s fiancée, who is Victor’s passion as well.

 

The best part is that del Toro restores and amplifies the morality tale Shelley had meant her book to be.  His message is kindness and forgiveness are the greatest virtues and arrogant ego meets its own just end.  Both the book and the Creature in the del Toro film quote Milton’s Paradise Lost about the purpose of creation to great effect. The film abounds in Christ symbolism.

 

The New York Times called Frankenstein the film del Toro was born to make. And that is no hyperbole. It will surely stalk the lobbies of award-givers in the season that is upon us!

 

The author is a Baroda-based economist