“I hadn’t considered what came after creation,” Victor (Oscar Isaac) confesses in “Frankenstein,” Guillermo del Toro’s cinematic incarnation of Mary Shelley’s novel. Victor, in other words, is very different from del Toro, who immerses himself in every facet of creation: the before, the during, and the after.
That was particularly apparent in 2023, when the Portland Art Museum’s centerpiece was a gallery celebrating del Toro’s life and work (his Oscar-winning stop motion adaptation of “Pinocchio” was partly produced at the Shadowmachine studio in Portland, Oregon, giving the city a point of pride).
Included in the exhibit was a set of Penguin Classics with introductions from the man himself: Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven,” Shirley Jackson’s “The Haunting of Hill House,” and—in a preview of coming attractions—Shelley’s “Frankenstein.”
Over the years, del Toro has pursued his literary passions to mixed success. He never did get to adapt H.P. Lovecraft’s “At the Mountains of Madness” (which would have been produced by James Cameron, del Toro’s longtime loyal friend), but he did adapt other Lovecraft stories for his Netflix anthology, “Cabinet of Curiosities.”
Continuing his partnership with the streamer, del Toro has now unleashed an ambitious adaptation of his favorite book of all: the lavish, haunting, 149-minute, $120 million “Frankenstein” (2013’s “Pacific Rim” is the only other GDT film to command a nine-figure budget).
Judging by the results, the money was well spent, despite a lengthy production that included the unexpected recasting of the Creature (the character typically and inaccurately referred to as Frankenstein). Originally, the role went to Andrew Garfield, whose exit enabled del Toro to cast Jacob Elordi (“Euphoria,” “Priscilla,” “Saltburn”).
In hindsight, this change works in the film’s favor. Elordi is utterly unrecognizable as the stitched-together Creature—monstrous yet tender, powerful yet delicate. He wears his prosthetics well, channeling Garfield’s arachnoid flexibility and the influence of GDT mainstay Doug Jones (“Pan’s Labyrinth”) into an expressively physical performance.
Elordi’s Creature is faithful not only to Shelley’s continental Gothic, but to del Toro’s Mexican Catholic upbringing. While most adaptations display the Creature horizontally, Isaac’s Victor props him up vertically, making him resemble Jesus on the cross.
(Interestingly, del Toro has stated that Boris Karloff’s iconic Universal Monsters performances helped him understand the concept of saints and messiahs when he was a child.)
Summing up the film’s dramatic flair, Isaac, del Toro’s fellow Latino, remarked in an interview that “Frankenstein” was “high passion all the time,” while co-star Mia Goth agreed with the director’s assessment of the movie not being a traditional horror film: “If anything, it’s a family drama.”
Playing a unique version of Elizabeth—who is Victor’s adoptive sister (and lover) in the novel—Goth is at the center of the film’s familial strife. Here, the character is betrothed to Victor’s brother William (Felix Kammerer), but drawn to both Victor and the Creature (the latter dynamic echoes Elisa and the Amphibian Man in del Toro’s “The Shape of Water”).
The changes to Elizabeth’s character are among many that keep educated viewers on their toes. From the start, it’s clear that del Toro isn’t aiming for a one-to-one adaptation; he even changes the British explorers who find Victor in the ice to Danes (whose bullets and blunderbusses are shrugged off by the Creature).
Additionally, del Toro continues his long-running critiques of fascism and capitalism by shifting the time period of the tale to the 1850s—with Victor sourcing parts for his creation from fallen soldiers in Crimea while Heinrich Harlander (Christoph Waltz), his Mephistophelian patron, nonchalantly sits and smokes his pipe.
(Any parallels to the current war in Ukraine, as well as Russia’s invasion of Crimea in 2014, are at once implicit and blunt.)
Even as Victor endures subzero temperatures and the loss of a leg, the cruelty of his father (Charles Dance) lives on through the mistreatment of the Creature. Yet Victor’s brutality, the film implies, has been inflamed not only by the presence of his father, but by the absence of his mother (also played by Goth), whose death underscores the lack of a maternal influence in his life (as does Victor’s habit of only drinking milk).
Unlike the eponymous handcrafted boy in “Pinocchio,” the Creature in “Frankenstein” has no wonder about death, only trauma. “This was the way of the world,” he laments. “It would hunt you and kill you just for being who you are.”
Yet in the end, Victor, overcome with regret for the tragedies he’s begotten, finally speaks truth to the Creature’s tortured heart: “While you are alive, what recourse do you have but to live?” To quote a common idiom in del Toro’s native tongue, “Vale la pena”: “It’s worth the pain.”
