Frankenstein encourages us to check our ambitions

Even if you don’t like artificial intelligence (AI) and the prospects it holds for replacing people’s labor, you have to be impressed by its speed and versatility. Specifically, you have to be taken aback by its ability to make something inanimate not only look human but present as rational and capable of feeling a wide range of emotions. I won’t go any deeper into the rabbit hole on this one. But all of this is prompted from watching Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein, a film adapted from Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel about a scientist who creates a creature in his laboratory and loses control of it.

Frankenstein opens in 1857 France with a Danish military ship run aground in large, thick blocks of ice. An officer informs the captain that the crew is cold and weary and needs to take a break, but he barks at the officer, ordering him to keep picking and shoveling to free the ship. When they hear shooting in the distance, a small cadre leaves to investigate, and they find a badly injured man who they take back to the ship. Later, the man tells them that his name is Dr. Victor Frankenstein (Oscar Isaac), and he proceeds to tell them the story of his life.

Close to his mother as a child, Victor is deeply saddened when he loses her during the birth of his younger brother, William. He blames his powerful, wealthy, arrogant, and abusive father, who is also a medical doctor, for not saving her. So, he vows to do something his father could not, which is to cheat death. “Not slow it down,” he says, “but stop it.” Years later, when the wealthy Harlander (Christoph Waltz) sees Victor’s demonstration during a presentation at a medical school, he and Victor’s brother, William (Felix Kamerer), offer to fund his work creating a being that defies death.

Watching the scenes of the three setting up Victor’s lab at the huge Frankenstein estate made me wonder about Shelley’s designs as she crafted the details for this work in her novel. The era predated electricity, so the work was done by sunlight and candlelight. Additionally, the work wasn’t intricate like surgery today. Victor haphazardly used saws to cut legs off one body and arms off another. He used tweezers to pluck eyes out of one body and a ping hammer to smash down joints where he needed.

Taken from a military battlefield, the bodies were not those of human beings to Victor. They were tools for his invention. As he finished with one, he literally threw it aside and moved on to the next until eventually there were body parts everywhere. I couldn’t help but think how desensitized he was to the fact that these corpses were people who meant something to their friends and families. Victor didn’t seem to have a clue or even care. I also wondered if this kind of approach to research is what eventually prompted legislation around anatomical gifts!

Initially excited after shocking “The Creature” (Jacob Elordi) to life and teaching him to say “Victor,” Victor leads him to the deepest level of the mansion and keeps him chained there. When he is unable to get The Creature to speak any other words, he becomes angry, calls him names like “stupid” and “moron,” and makes him position himself to be beaten.

My use of pronouns here to refer to The Creature are inconsistent with Victor’s label, which is “it.” His objectification of The Creature also contrasts with the way William’s fiancée, Elizabeth (Mia Goth) interacts with The Creature. Upon discovering him in the basement, she slowly approaches him and allows him to gently touch her hands. Clearly smitten by her, he repeats her name when she introduces herself. After marveling at his body, she asks him about the source of a fresh, bloody wound on his abdomen. Angry, she heads upstairs and accuses Victor of beating him, which he denies.

Fearing he can neither teach nor control the creature he created, Victor tries to kill him but is unsuccessful. In his escape, The Creature stumbles upon a farm and makes his home in the barn attached to the family’s home. Watching and listening to the goings-on in the cracks between the wood, he learns to read and appreciate the value of family. In exchange, he secretly supports the farm by fixing broken fences and using his incredible strength to remove big pieces of logs and debris. 

When The Creature is discovered on the farm, he returns to Victor to ask him to make another creature like him. “I cannot die and I cannot live alone,” he says. Instead of acknowledging the depths of The Creature’s humanity as demonstrated by his rational thought, capacity for emotion, speech, and clear need for human touch and companionship, Victor picks up where he left off in his verbal and physical abuse. The Creature retaliates in-kind.

Several films and television shows have been based on Shelley’s story of Frankenstein over the years. Most notable for me is The Munsters, a television comedy starring Fred Gwynne whose character, Herman Munster, was constructed of metal and screws, wore heavy boots, and had green skin. Despite his intentionally frightening appearance, he and the other monsters in the show were hilarious.

Guillerno del Toro’s Frankenstein reminds me a great deal of the television series Beauty and the Beast, with Ron Perlman as Vincent (The Beast) and Linda Hamilton as Catherine Chandler, an assistant district attorney he protected and longed for. Roy Dotrice was “Father,” a man Vincent could rely on for safety and a safe haven. While Catherine was Vincent’s love interest in the TV series, Elizabeth was The Creature’s in the movie, Frankenstein. We knew this as light music cued whenever the two were in each other’s company. In stark contrast, while Father protected Vincent in Beauty and the Beast, Victor browbeat and bullied The Creature. The various twists made on Shelley’s novel over the years across genres, characters, and relationships have been imaginative and engaging.

As a child, I remember seeing an episode of the Friday night series, Screaming Yellow Theater, where a man’s leg was amputated in an eighteenth century operating room theater to teach other surgeons how it’s done. No anesthesia was used on the patient, and what I still remember decades later is the man screaming while the doctor sawed off his leg just below the knee. Perhaps, the man was given a shot of whiskey or bourbon to prepare him, but clearly it was not enough. It would be unfair to view the medical and research protocols practiced centuries ago through today’s lens. It is fair to critique, however, a person’s humanity regardless of the era. Dehumanizing people is a choice we make, and if Victor is any example, the choice is made easy when ambitions go overindulged and unchecked. William and Harlander fed Victor’s aspirations and determination, and by doing so allowed him to wreak havoc on The Creature’s life and on their own lives as well.

I was surprised at how much I liked Frankenstein. I found it digestible because The Creature, while constructed of a composite of body parts, looked human rather than made of metal boxes and screws. Making him this way allowed him to appear human and relatable, which was further legitimized by his verbal, psychological, and emotional development over time. These heightened his likability and paved the way for his presentation as an empathetic and even flawed human being. This progression from grunting monster to empathetic human is quite a feat, especially since he was only assigned a label in the film and never given a name despite the irony of being more humane and compassionate than his maker. Congratulations to Guillermo del Toro and his team on their Best Picture nomination.