Frankenstein is a masterpiece, an instant classic and a complete and utter triumph. It sticks very close to the source material while managing to be something fresh and new, it maintains its historic setting while never forgetting the current moment, and it all hangs on two extraordinary central performances that show hidden depths in two adored actors. There is gore and an incredible amount of horror but it is also so precisely judged it is never unwatchable, a test many movies at the Venice Film Festival fail to pass. Guillermo del Toro has made one of the best movies of the year, and possibly the best movie in a very long time. It is a gift from him to us and it is so spectacular to see.
Young Victor (Christian Convery) lives happily with his mother (Lauren Collins) in splendor in France under the tyrannical thumb of his abusive surgeon father (Charles Dance). Despite his father’s medical skill his mother dies giving birth to a little brother and is buried in an ivory coffin. As a result Victor vows to surpass his father’s medical gifts and put an end to death itself. A horrifying presentation in a medical room in Edinburgh brings the adult Victor (now Oscar Isaac) to the attention of Harlander (Christoph Waltz), whose niece Elizabeth (Mia Goth) is affianced to Victor’s younger brother William (Felix Kammerer). Harlander is willing to finance Victor’s experiment and locates a disused water tower for his laboratory. At the top is a water feature of Medusa frozen in horror. As William oversees the creation and installation of all the equipment, Elizabeth and Victor take tea and talk. For the first time in his life Victor has met a woman who is his intellectual equal, and begins thinking about a possible life for himself instead of endless, endless death. But he who holds the purse strings controls the timeline. Harlander does not want to wait, and there is a lightning storm brewing overhead.
Del Toro makes the wise decision to skip “It’s alive!!!” and have Victor (who in a neat little touch sleeps with his mother’s favourite red dress) awaken to find the Creature (Jacob Elordi, much more on whom later) standing at the foot of his bed. He has been constructed from corpses freshly combined off a battlefield and for a long time the only word he can speak is Victor’s name. His body looks like it has been carved from marble and Victor keeps him chained in the sewers under the tower. He doesn’t have the patience to handle an enormous creature with the emotional awareness of a toddler. Victor never once considered what would happen if he succeeded and is not equal to this task. And this is the fatal flaw.
All this is being recounted to the captain of a Danish ship (Lars Mikkelsen) that’s icebound somewhere in the “farthermost north.” The stories within the story is straight out of Mary Shelley’s novel, but things have been elided. The long sequence where the Creature learns the full breadth of his intellect from a blind miller in a forest (the underpraised David Bradley) features violence only against wolves and adults. The gore is fantastical but somehow easy to watch, something which is very hard to do and will enable this to find a huge audience. Being straightforward about the horror is a refreshingly honest way to handle all the brutality on display here. In places the cobblestones run with blood and Victor actually inspects the bodies of condemned men while they are still alive. There is a difference between being truthful and being out to shock, and Frankenstein always finds the right balance. There’s a stronger impact to showing a cavalryman frozen to death on top of his frozen horse without comment. We can reflect on the horror long after the image is gone.
Mr. Isaac here confirms his position as one of the great modern movie stars, here using his charisma and intellect with a calm righteousness that makes Victor’s monstrous ego feel completely natural. Ms. Goth has less to do other than wear a bewitching array of Kate Hawley’s costumes, but her strangeness and her warmth enable Elizabeth’s quietly feminist asides to land as intended, if not with the men in her life. Mr Waltz and Mr Dance play expertly to type without ego, but it is Mr Elordi who is the real surprise. I have said elsewhere that he is so tall he somehow seems like he is bursting out of his own body and here his physicality is used to perfection. The Creature’s height intimidates, his inhuman strength terrifies and his hairtrigger ability to snap from a gentle caress to unthinkable violence is extraordinarily done, all because Mr. Elordi makes us feel the anguish under all of the Creature’s choices. His disgust at his own existence and his fury at what Victor has done have propelled him to the end of the earth even as this is not truly his nature. But it is excruciatingly hard to be a monster, and there is only so much pain anyone can endure in this life. Teenage girls, gays and theys who see him say “we could be monsters together” will swoon and never stop.
Tamara Deverell’s production design is flawless, Dan Laustsen’s cinematography provides a sense of scale more commonly seen in action blockbusters, and Evan Schiff’s editing keeps the pace pulsing along like a beating heart. But it’s Mr. del Toro who deserves all the accolades. It is almost unbelievable that all his passion and expertise have combined so perfectly. Frankenstein is an extraordinary movie that deserves all the praise and the awards that will be thrown at it. There is nothing wrong with it whatsoever. It entertains, it shocks, it horrifies and it moves us, which is exactly what movies were designed to give us and so rarely do. It is complete and utter perfection. What a horrible, wonderful joy.
Frankenstein recently premiered at the Venice International Film Festival.
Learn more about the film at the Venice site for the title.
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