Del Toro’s Frankenstein

[js_thrill]

 I wanted to like this movie! I also wanted to like the recent Nosferatu (the atmosphere didn’t hit right for me), and Sinners (I liked the one dance sequence a lot, but I really felt like the horror element didn’t land for me).  I am not sure why it is that critical and commercial darlings have been leaving me flat, as a phenomena, but it’s not that I don’t like movies! I do like movies!  I liked Barbarian, Kate and I went to see The Thing on the big screen and that movie is great! Looking forward to seeing Weapons, also. 

Behind the cut I am going to say some of what I didn’t love about the adaptation choices with GDT’s Frankenstein, so spoilers ahoy.
 

In the book, Victor is shitty, but he is shitty in very different ways than he is in GDT’s movie. For example, in the book, Victor doesn’t know that his experiment succeeded, the creature runs off, and has a rough start to life due to his grotesque form and lack of parentage/conpanionship, but Victor is not a physically abusive parent. This matters (to me) because it really centers Victor’s failing in his choice to push the boundaries with his experiment with tampering with the forces of life and the unknown. In GDT’s film, Victor knows that his project succeeds, but just doesn’t want to be a dad, and has no patience for child-rearing. He wants the creature to be an adult immediately, and hits him (re-enacting the violence his own father instigated on him) to teach the creature to speak. This is a logistical issue in the script, as the creature is immediately able to learn new words as soon as anyone else attempts to interact with it, and in fact learns to read from indirect observation of someone else’s lessons (as he does in the book), and thematic issues, because now we don’t get a fundamental issue with the creature’s exclusion from companionship with humans due to his nature, we only get the contrast in parenting styles, really. It is bad to yell at and hit children. It is good to approach them with kindness and patience and understanding. That’s obviously true, but it means victor isn’t doing promethean risk taking, he’s just a bad dad.

We also, in this adaptation, take away any of the creature’s monstrous behavior. In the book, the creature kills William to punish Victor, and frames Justine. Victor, in cowardice, lets Justine get framed. He begins to accede to the creatures demand for a companion, but, afraid of the capacity for violence the creature has shown, changes his mind and destroys the companion. In GDT’s film, Victor is just a more villainous figure and the creature a more innocent one. There is destruction due to the creature’s strength, but virtually all the death the creature causes is misunderstanding, self-defense, or people directly in the way of him trying to hurt Victor. This is a vivid contrast to the way in which we connect with, say, the creature in Shape of Water, who is sympathetic and treated with personhood and understanding but is still dangerous enough to eat your cat if left unattended. Victor, on the other hand, frames the creature for the death of his financial benefactor (a character invented for the adaptation) in a move that seems related to a quasi-Oedipal interest in his soon to be sister in law who has shown much interest in mothering/affection for the creature that Victor has already tired of and who is played by the same actress who portrayed Victor’s mother who died when he was tragically young, and who inspired his quest to overcome death. Anyway, her interest in the creature is what inspires him to attempt to murder the creature, which is what sets the creature on its sojourn, and how the creature then learns to speak and read from a blind grandpa in the woods who accepts him. Victor then sees the creature again at the wedding, where the sister in law tries to stop Victor from shooting the creature (which wouldn’t have mattered because the creature has Wolverine-like healing powers), and Victor shoots her by acccident but blames the creature (who does kill William by sweeping him away in a way that leads his head to hit a wall or column too forcefully). Anyway, book victor is already very bad! book creature is already a complex creature worth considering and understanding on his own terms, given the harshness of being flung into a world that treats him so horribly.

Perhaps one could alter/soften/remove the revenge murders if one wants to explore a more sympathetic creature, but then one needs a better motivation for Victor to refuse companionship to the creature. Book Victor has legitimate fears about the immorality or amorality of the creature, and whether things can be solved by more tampering with nature. Hubris caused this, can it solve it?  GDT’s isn’t in the same situation remotely. His science worked fine, and the issue is that he wasn’t a fit parent for any child, human or creature.

Comments

[selki]

Oh, thank you for this review! I had been excited to see this at first, and thought it was supposed to be VERY close to the book, but then a podcast review of it that liked the movie a lot seemed a bit off, and then I saw a preview that looked gory and the bridal dress looked silly. I felt a bit bad for not going. NOW I know I'd really dislike the movie AND I know why! I'm kind of a Frankenstein nerd (I know the differences between the different editions of it, and theories about the differences, and I've read / read about the books the creature reads to educate himself) and I was on a podcast about the book and sang the filk I'd made up about that proto techno-bro, Victor F.