by Mark Demetrius
Worth: $14.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Oscar Isaac, Jacob Elordi, Christoph Waltz, Mia Goth
Intro:
… terrific and exciting in parts, and occasionally intellectually stimulating.
Frankenstein hits the ground — or rather the snow and ice — running, with an adrenalised scene in the Arctic involving ‘the Creature’ (Jacob Elordi) and a Danish ship. It stays riveting for a while, and promises to be a rattling good yarn, while being graced with rich dialogue and voice-overs. (Credit for which can of course be traced back to Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel.)
We move from the frozen north back to the England of 1955, where the intensely driven Baron Victor Frankenstein (Oscar Isaac) is immersed in his plan to conquer death and create life. His benefactor in this Promethean project is the wealthy arms dealer Heinrich Harlander (Christoph Waltz), and the process involves a lot of drama, considerable heartache and frustration — and a load of special effects.
Guillermo del Toro takes the book — rather than any of the many early film versions — as his springboard here; the Creature doesn’t look remotely Karloffian, for example. There’s an interesting departure in perspective whereby del Toro divides the story into two parts: Victor’s Tale and The Creature’s Tale. But he goes beyond reimagining to the point of including scenes that lose its whole essence rather than just plot details. There’s a long scene about ’the spirit of the forest’ and a venerable old blind man that’s frankly excruciating in its Tolkienesque sentimentality. The dark and multilayered cautionary tale of Frankenstein can legitimately be many things, moving included, but saccharine? Surely not.
Frankenstein is wildly uneven. It’s terrific and exciting in parts, and occasionally intellectually stimulating. Isaac and Waltz’s performances are impressive, and so is that of Mia Goth as the empathetic Elizabeth, the fiance of Victor’s brother. On the other hand, it’s sometimes maudlin or incongruous, and plodding, and the CGI can be puerile. On balance, it’s quite good, and definitely worth seeing — on the big screen.
