Director: Kenneth Branagh
Writer: Mary Shelley, Steph Lady, Frank Darabont
Stars: Kenneth Branagh, Robert De Niro, Helena Bonham Carter
Synopsis: When the brilliant but unorthodox scientist Dr. Victor Frankenstein rejects the artificial man that he has created, the Creature escapes and later swears revenge.
Unconventional university doctor Victor Frankenstein (Kenneth Branagh) leaves his betrothed Elizabeth (Helena Bonham Carter) to defy science and create life from death. Rejected by his creator for his grotesque visage, Frankenstein’s monstrous abomination (Robert De Niro) demands a mate like himself, vowing fatal revenge in a tragic chain of events.
Star Kenneth Branagh (Hamlet) also directs Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and this two hour 1994 adaptation’s framework is indeed more faithful to the novel than other pictures that often have very little to do with the famed 1818 source. Ship bound iceberg perils and North Pole isolation establish the tension as our tale is told in flashback, beginning with colorful 1773 Geneva happiness for our boy Victor. White gowns marred with blood and the death of his mother in childbirth spur the studious youth on to gadgets, electrical experiments, and an obsession to cease death itself. Onscreen annotations update the timeline and location changes as Victor moves on to his Bavarian university and creepy attic laboratory, but the constant hop, skip, and jumps are indicative of how hectic the first half of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein will be. Victor objects to the established scientific teachings, citing medieval occultists and alchemists amid expelled mentors, friends fainting at autopsies, and medical exposition. Love letters have no room for emotion thanks to distracting narrations and intercut montages busy with heretical arguments and contrived classroom tension. The camera is always moving and panning as if it must match the fast talking debates on life preservation, abominations, and 18th century anti-vaxxers. Victor screams and shouts as the overhead camera spins – even when he is alone reading aloud to himself. This speedy camerawork becomes inadvertently humorous, an unnecessary intensity jarring against the better eerie moments. Frankenstein steals a body from the gallows, peruses cholera victims, puts a brain on ice, and pays for fresh amniotic fluid to reanimate a frog, never heading scholars warning him that the body is not mere tissue to be reused.
Already unlikable, Victor becomes visually insufferable, and Branagh clearly was not the right director for Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Instead of focusing on Frankenstein’s shoving away his love, Branagh showcases his own increasingly dirty, sweaty, shirtless action. Disturbing hatchets, stitching limbs, beakers, and tubes give way to heaving pulleys, massive chains, and steam as Victor sits on top of his fiery birthing sac and wills his creation to live. Sexual visuals amid the experiment are fine. However, after all the in your face, fast paced, ridiculously noticeable camerawork; the slippery birth, goo, nudity, and squirming are drawn out in an equally ridiculous slow exaggeration. Frankenstein’s zeal inexplicably turns to regret at his pitiful creation. He vows to destroy his journal, reunite with his fiancee, and retire to a medical partnership. The change is rapid and confusing after such labored experimentation, and now Victor cries in bed with overlays of everyone chastising him. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein falls back on more montages and silly slow motion as Branagh’s self-indulgent direction doesn’t want to leave Victor to focus on other characters. Fortunately, the romance is lovely once it becomes the focus – a telling visual difference between the beauty of real love versus the monstrous birthing sequence. Inevitably, of course, the man-made horror ultimately enters in with desperation, blood, and beating hearts. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein deviates from its source in the creature’s demands for a bride of his own. However this time the panoramic chains and frenetic creation lead to excellent disturbing imagery. The ring is placed on the graying finger for a warped dance of decrepit love and tragic realizations.
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein excels in the quiet, subtle scenes with Robert De Niro (Goodfellas) once the on-the-run sadness and village folk screaming are allowed to take center stage. The Creation steals food amid plague fears, coming to hide in a struggling family’s barn. He becomes their silent benefactor during the harsh winter, a “good spirit of the forest” to the innocent girl and blind man. Instead of the earlier arrogant, frenetic science, we’re now learning at the Monster’s pace as he reads Frankenstein’s journal. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein slows down for tender scenes halfway through when the Creation finally talks. The uneven, busy first half may make this time with the Monster seem boring for some viewers, but the sobbing loneliness and misunderstandings over his ugly visage are the consequence of all the devil may care mad science. He treks in the snow to picturesque Geneva – exacting a fiery revenge with boys in peril, fatalities, and family shocks. Torches and storms accent the literary terror as mistaken culprits and angry mobs begat disturbing hangings and one on one conflicts between the man and his Monster. Rather than heavy handed direction, Shelley’s existential science fiction parables come forth. Does he have residual knowledge from his composite parts or were they mere biological materials? Why give life but then leave him to die? We don’t blame the Creature for his vengeance against his maker, but he has learned the ways of men and caused innocent deaths. He knows this makes him a monster indeed, but did he ever have a soul anyway? Sadly sympathy and peace cannot be found in his demand for a female creation thanks to selfishness and broken promises.
Initially the playful family ward, Helena Bonham Carter’s (A Room with a View) Elizabeth, blossoms as Victor’s love. Their one-on-one dialogues are well paced, soft spoken and bittersweet compared to his monstrous fervor, and Elizabeth’s red frocks and bridal gowns foreshadow her fate. Several more familiar faces – including ship captain Aidan Quinn (Legends of the Fall), professor John Cleese (Monty Python), and Baron Ian Holm (Alien) – pepper the existential gravitas. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein looks the part with arctic frigid contrasting the grandiose interiors. Massive gray halls and an epic winding staircase recall an exaggerated Expressionism alongside candles, shadows, and lightning. Sweeping balls and lovely scenery make room for happiness, kites, and storms. Although the epic baroque music is pleasant in itself, the intrusive orchestration makes every scene unnecessarily intense. This heavy handed score is often up when the diabolic onscreen feels more tragic. The audience needs no such heraldry when the morose is allowed to play to its expected climax. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is entertaining for its period gothic mood, and its overall literary faithfulness with scenes that aren’t often presented on screen remains watchable. Quiet character moments invoke the novel better than the frenetic cinematography, sweeping crescendos, and over the top camerawork. Adhering to the page structure means the story changes per character, however instead of episodic acts, the uneven, back and forth pacing makes Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein feel as if it doesn’t truly begin until the second half. Shortening the self-indulgent first half down to an opening half hour would have gotten to the meatiest science fiction questions faster without having sacrificed the source. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is excellent when the picture stays still long enough to let the horror unfold in a fitting, fiery finish.
