As the poster suggests, there was no general release for Guillermo del Torro's Frankenstein. I was lucky that the Rex in Berkhamsted had acquired this Netflix film. I did mention in my review of November's Sight and Sound Magazine that it was a shame I wouldn't be able to see it. Revisiting the magazine, it was great to see all those splendid stills from the film. The movie is an adaptation of the Mary Shelley novel, (see below). The dialogue (by del Toro) was just almost OK, but why doesn't he have help? But it's the visuals for which he is quite rightly famed. The sets, costumes, production design and cinematography are all Oscar worthy. From the first scenes of the boat stuck in the arctic ice to the isolated castle where experiments take place, I'm glad I was able to see in on a biggish screen. The story mimics the book as it is set in three parts, the Captain, Victor and the Creature. There is one segment in the latter's story that seemed unnecessary, but then we would have missed David Bradley's blind man, this actor has never been better.
I was unsure about the casting. Oscar Isaac puts heart and soul into Victor, but maybe something more subtle was needed. And Jacob Elordi has a thankless task as the Creature. Even Mia Goth was miscast as Elizabeth, and that also goes for Christoph Waltz as Heinrich and others. Critic Eileen Jones says it's a "big bloated mess" but it isn't. In that nine page section in Sight and Sound, the director called it a "melodrama rather than a horror". He has obviously forgotten the wolves! Jonathon Romney tells us "the film is authentically rooted in the structure of Shelley's novel, beginning and ending her story amid the ice flows of the far north. But the director tells him "most of the dialogue is not from the book" which might have been a mistake. Jamie Graham in the Sunday Times full page review mostly includes an interview with the director without ever concluding whether or not he liked the film. Strange.
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