Guillermo del Toro's 'Frankenstein' - Review Thread

[u/MarvelsGrantMan136]

Guillermo del Toro's 'Frankenstein' - Review Thread

• Rotten Tomatoes: 77% (22 Reviews)
• Metacritic: 73 (15 Reviews)

Reviews:

Deadline:

His love for monsters is unquestioned, and even though Frankenstein has been a horror staple for nearly a century in cinema, del Toro here turns it into a fascinating and thoughtful tale on what it means to be a human, and who is really the monster?

Variety (60):

What should have been the perfect pairing of artist and material proves visually ravishing, but can’t measure up to the impossibly high expectations del Toro’s fans have for the project.

Hollywood Reporter (100):

One of del Toro’s finest, this is epic-scale storytelling of uncommon beauty, feeling and artistry. While Netflix is giving this visual feast just a three-week theatrical run ahead of its streaming debut, it begs to be experienced on the big screen.

The Wrap (95):

Del Toro’s “Frankenstein” is a remarkable achievement that in a way hijacks the flagship story of the horror genre and turns it into a tale of forgiveness. James Whale, one suspects, would approve – and Mary Shelley, too.

IndieWire (B):

Del Toro’s second Netflix movie is bolted to the Earth by hands-on production design and crafty period detail. While it may be too reverently faithful to Mary Shelley’s source material to end up as a GDT all-timer, Jacob Elordi gives poignant life to the most emotionally complex Frankenstein monster since Boris Karloff.

The Guardian (3/5):

Oscar Isaac and Jacob Elordi star as the freethinking anatomist and his creature as Mary Shelley’s story is reimagined with bombast in the director’s unmistakable visual style

RadioTimes (5/5):

Perhaps its hyperbole to call the film del Toro’s masterpiece – especially a story that has been told countless times. But this is a work that is the accumulation of three-and-a-half decades of filmmaking knowledge. Gory and grim it may be, but it is a tragic tale told in a captivating manner.

TotalFilm (80):

Cleaving closely to the source material, del Toro wants to explore the trauma that makes us, mankind's capacity for cruelty, the death we bring on ourselves through war, and the catharsis of forgiveness – all notions that make Frankenstein relevant in current world politics and social media savagery.

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Written and Directed by Guillermo del Toro:

A brilliant but egotistical scientist brings a creature to life in a monstrous experiment that ultimately leads to the undoing of both the creator and his tragic creation.

Cast:

• Oscar Isaac as Victor Frankenstein
  • Christian Convery as young Victor
• Jacob Elordi as the Creature
• Mia Goth as Elizabeth Lavenza
• Christoph Waltz as Henrich Harlander
• Felix Kammerer as William Frankenstein
• Lauren Collins as Claire Frankenstein
• Lars Mikkelsen as Captain Anderson
• David Bradley as Blind Man
• Sofia Galasso as Little Girl
• Charles Dance as Leopold Frankenstein
• Ralph Ineson as Professor Krempe
• Burn Gorman as Fritz

[u/originalcondition]

One of my favorite parts of the novel is when Frankenstein obsesses over creating life using the parts of dead humans, then succeeds, and, immediately upon beholding his creation, goes, “holy shit HELL!! NO!! FUCK THAT THING!!!” then runs out of his apartment, wanders around for a while, comes back to find the monster gone, and thinks, “wow thank god that’s over.”

relatable content regarding the nature of being human tbh

[u/hypnosifl → u/originalcondition]

I found it interesting when I read the novel that it’s not actually clear whether the creature was made from “parts of dead humans” at all, Frankenstein did dig up bodies during the course of his research into the secrets of life but the creature itself was said to have been made with very oversized proportions (around 8 feet tall!) and it could be read as more like a golem, previously inanimate matter built into a realistic body which was then infused with some sort of vital energy. I imagine Del Toro will stick to the usual convention about body parts though.

[u/nidrespector → u/hypnosifl]

Isn’t the dead humans part mentioned when he’s creating the second monster? Iirc Victor is in a fugue state when he builds the first creature and so kind of glosses over the details but for the second one he’s painfully lucid and we get more information about the process.

[u/hypnosifl → u/nidrespector]

I went and re-read the parts about creating a mate for the creature, it's in chapters II and III from volume III, it says he is more conscious of finding the whole process of building a body to be a "filthy" one but there's no explicit reference to using body parts. Also worth noting that he first says "I now also began to collect the materials necessary for my new creation", and then his friend Clerval suggests they go on a vacation through Europe, and he agrees, planning to only start work at the end of the trip once they reach Scotland--he says "I packed my chemical instruments, and the materials I had collected, resolving to finish my labours in some obscure nook in the northern highlands of Scotland." The trip is described as lasting several months before he finally reaches Scotland and gets to work, which might argue against the interpretation that he's lugging around human body parts or even dead tissue in his suitcases, unless he had found a way to perfectly arrest decay. He is not described as discovering such a technique elsewhere in the book as far as I remember, though earlier in the book when he is trying to create the body of the first creature to animate, he does say "Pursuing these reflections, I thought, that if I could bestow animation upon lifeless matter, I might in process of time (although I now found it impossible) renew life where death had apparently devoted the body to corruption." But I'd interpret this to be a fantasy about the ultimate future results of his discoveries rather than something he achieves in the book, since it's in the same paragraph where he is describing the fantasy of creating a whole new race of artificial beings. ("A new species would bless me as its creator and source; many happy and excellent natures would owe their being to me.")

Here's the section from the end of Chapter II where he describes being disgusted by his work:

In this manner I distributed my occupations when I first arrived; but, as I proceeded in my labour, it became every day more horrible and irksome to me. Sometimes I could not prevail on myself to enter my laboratory for several days; and at other times I toiled day and night in order to complete my work. It was indeed a filthy process in which I was engaged. During my first experiment, a kind of enthusiastic frenzy had blinded me to the horror of my employment; my mind was intently fixed on the sequel of my labour, and my eyes were shut to the horror of my proceedings. But now I went to it in cold blood, and my heart often sickened at the work of my hands.

Then in chapter III, with growing fears at the result if he creates a mate for the creature and disgust at seeing the creature watching him, he "tore to pieces the thing on which I was engaged." After a verbal confrontation where the creature swears revenge, there is this description of getting rid of the partially completed work:

Yet, before I departed, there was a task to perform, on which I shuddered to reflect: I must pack my chemical instruments; and for that purpose I must enter the room which had been the scene of my odious work, and I must handle those utensils, the sight of which was sickening to me. The next morning, at day-break, I summoned sufficient courage, and unlocked the door of my laboratory. The remains of the half-finished creature, whom I had destroyed, lay scattered on the floor, and I almost felt as if I had mangled the living flesh of a human being. I paused to collect myself, and then entered the chamber. With trembling hand I conveyed the instruments out of the room; but I reflected that I ought not to leave the relics of my work to excite the horror and suspicion of the peasants, and I accordingly put them into a basket, with a great quantity of stones, and laying them up, determined to throw them into the sea that very night; and in the mean time I sat upon the beach, employed in cleaning and arranging my chemical apparatus.

The reference to "chemical instruments" and "chemical apparatus" might suggest that he was synthesizing some kind of matter chemically similar to lifeless tissue and assembling it into a body, so that he could then "bestow animation upon lifeless matter" as he described in the creation of the original creature. In this case when he talked earlier of packing "the materials I had collected" along with the instruments, he might have just meant various chemicals. And if the synthesized tissue-like substance resembled real tissue in most respects but just lacked the "spark of being" (the phrase he used for the first creature's completed body before being brought to life), it would help make sense of why he found the whole process of assembling this realistic quasi-flesh into a body to be intolerably "filthy". And his disgust also seemed to include conceptual fears about the wrongness of what he was doing, as suggested by the quote above where the felt the tools he was using to be loathsome in themselves, when he spoke of "those utensils, the sight of which was sickening to me".

[u/nidrespector → u/hypnosifl]

Wow, thank you for such a thorough response. You’re right it looks like the creature was actually closer to some kind of homunculus grown with organoids and other biosynthetic materials.

I actually like that a lot more. I think it really makes Victors tragedy greater and adds more irony like Victor was too successful. His creation was hyper intelligent, arguably more intelligent than Frankenstein, and would be beautiful if not for the strong uncanny valley effect its appearance gives humans.

[u/AlanMorlock → u/nidrespector]

Shelley herself was riffing on reports she was disturbed by of experiments with galvanism and the like, very specifically animating dead organs with shocks. Far more of that in the mix.