‘Frankenstein’: the beautiful monster by Guillermo del Toro and Jacob Elordi takes the floor | Cinema: previews and reviews

Jacob Elordi wasn’t Guillermo del Toro’s first choice to play his creation Frankenstein. But when Andrew Garfield abandoned the project weeks before filming began, after months of preparation, the Australian actor’s name emerged as a replacement and del Toro and makeup artist Mike Hill, a frequent collaborator, reinvented the monster. We don’t know what the character would have been like in the original plan, but Elordi’s work, the sadness and loneliness he transmits, is the heart of a film that grows in the second act, when the creature finally speaks.

Frankenstein It premiered on October 17th in (very few) theaters and now comes to Netflix. It’s a shame the strategy of this platform, which seems determined to stifle the passage of its releases to cinemas. A house full of dynamite OR Frankenstein are the latest and deplorable examples of how the company streaming mishandles the screening of his productions on the big screen. In the case of a film like this, any one, but especially in the case of a gothic fantasy with large sets and two and a half hours of running time, the domestic environment ends up being lethal.

Del Toro’s love of the monster is at the heart of his adaptation of the myth created by Mary Shelley in her 1818 novel Frankenstein or the modern Prometheus. Well steeped in literature, this new version tends towards paternal filial tragedy tinged with gothic romanticism. The fate of the scientist (played by Oscar Isaac) and his son is anchored in Victor Frankenstein’s lonely childhood, marked by the death of his mother and a distant and authoritarian father. All the pain in the film comes from that family failure and del Toro’s compassionate vision: forgiveness is the key to his vision of the myth.

Since its presentation at the last Venice Film Festival, the Mexican director has declared that it is a project he has wanted for three decades. And it has its own logic: all of his cinema revolves around the idea of ​​the monstrous and somehow the myth of Frankenstein has always been latent in his imagination. Del Toro often mentions his debt The spirit of the hive and, obviously, with the two films that marked the foundation of the myth of cinema, the unsurpassable Frankenstein (1931) e The Bride of Frankenstein (1935), in which director James Whale, actor Boris Karloff, and makeup artist Jack Pierce established the popular image of the creature. A monster who expressed himself with growls and who, thanks to Karloff’s enormous talent, showed his torment with his hands, his eyes and his particular and awkward way of walking and moving.

Despite these references, del Toro’s version is more reminiscent of the adaptation directed by Kenneth Branagh in the 1990s, Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, although that one was much more violent and dark, and the martyrdom of his creation, played by Robert De Niro, focused rather crudely on his lack of identity. The producer was Francis Ford Coppola, whose revision of another horror film myth, Draculait seems like another source of inspiration for this novelty Frankenstein, especially in the aesthetics of the female characters, especially Elisabeth (Mia Goth), in which Mary Shelley / the monster’s bride from the 1935 classic also resonates, although the character remains on the surface.

However, Del Toro and Elordi do something very different that ends up pointing their own path. We see his creation being born and becoming aware of his body and his fate thanks to how the young actor transmits layers of emotion and life that blend with his makeup. His interior and exterior work is moving, as his eyes and movements say. His gesture was always influenced by his height, by his childish air, by fear and fury, by the unfathomable consequences of his misfortune. Made of human shreds, Elordi’s eyes remind us that there is no monster more unfortunate than Frankenstein’s.