Theatrical and well made
Following on the heels of Coppola’s “Bram Stoker’s Dracula”, Kenneth Branagh’s “Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein” is every bit as passionately put together- half classic literature, half bombastic Hollywood theatricality. This story of man’s arrogance and science run wild still retains its lessons and its tragedy and just because it goes over the top with them, doesn’t make this any less potent than Branagh’s Shakespearean work.
His Victor Frankenstein is someone we know will spend the remainder of his days in exile, lost in the sea of terrible decisions and agony that he’s created for himself. He then recounts how he got there. The son of a wealthy Geneva family, he’s ebullient and charming, consumed with studying medicine until his mother’s death makes it more than just a career- he vows that he will eliminate death in his lifetime.
Off to medical school while using a rooming house as a lab, the kid suddenly becomes defined as a mad alchemist. He’s discovered that animal tissue can be revived with electricity and with the help of a professor (a believably earnest John Cleese) who has also pushed the boundaries of medicine, he feels he can revive someone. Picking a condemned, haggard beggar (Robert DeNiro) as his host body, he then selects body parts-including a professorial brain- to create his own perfect man.
The monster birth is all kinds of awesome. Coming in hot with an amped intensity, Victor flies around the room, sweaty and shirtless,, pulling levers and pulleys conveying a copper chamber with the monster inside. Electrodes are attached and electric eels are unleashed. Everything from the electricity to the lighting crackles with life until suddenly the monster emerges, like an old, mucusy, (really fucked up looking) baby. Everything here from the production design to make-up is produced with an eye toward excitement.
As mentioned, the monsters also looks terrific. Head shaved, bloody stitches all around his face, and a face only Mickey Rourke’s mother could love, he’s given wonderful vulnerability by DeNiro. Able to read, understand, and even feel, he faces the shunning from the townspeople and even people he’s helped to the point where that is what really changes him- if they are going to treat him as a monster, he may as well become one.
The tragedy of it remains intact. While DeNiro loses his humanity, Victor slowly comes to realize the fallacy of his Godliness. Branagh I think does a wonderful job playing him. However well-meaning he may be, it’s his misguided obsessiveness, the thing he refuses to see within himself, that makes him a cautionary tale, not a sympathetic character.
Branagh, as director, also plays up the devastation of Shelley’s third act and even adds a lot more. It might bother purists but it also definitely makes for a more exciting theatrical experience. A war of sorts emerges between the monster and Victor, one where mostly innocents are the ones hurt. Opportunities for thematic horror present themselves more and more, the best of which is Helena Bonham Carter, perfectly cast as the fragile, unspoiled, consistently loving adopted sister Elizabeth to Victor, who soon becomes his lover and then wife. The film does some great corpse bride type stuff with her later- made all the better by Carter’s “this can’t be happening” realization of what Victor’s love really is. The close-ups of DeNiro also do a more than effective job as well. There is plenty of showmanship here but the tortured characters of Shelley’s work are what really put the life in Branagh’s adaptation. They create an uncomfortable bond that in the end finds them inextricably linked and the product of the other’s destruction.