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    Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

    Reviewed by
    adamwatchesmovies@

    “Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein” is a near miss. It’s a good movie, but not a great one. Despite some good-looking visuals and ambitious choices throughout it’s just “another” adaptation of the story instead of being what I was hoping it would be, the “definitive” version.

    Victor Frankenstein (Kenneth Branagh, who also directs) seeks to create life in his own image. Unaware of Victor’s experiments, his fiancé Elizabeth (Helena Bonham Carter) dreams of her wedding night while his best friend Henry Clerval (Tom Hulce) studies to be a doctor. Raiding charnel houses and crypts, Victor assembles a body and breathes life into it. Abandoned by its father and rejected by the world, The Monster (Robert De Niro) seeks revenge.

    I don’t know what it is about Mary Shelley’s novel and its subsequent adaptations. So many versions have come and gone over the years and yet the one from 1931, despite only loosely adapting the book and changing details left and right (sometimes inexplicably), still manages to bring the 1818 story to life better than any other that I’ve seen. Don’t let the title fool you. Despite having the author’s name front and center, there’s something missing from this movie. I can’t say I dislike it. Actually I think it’s pretty good. But it’s like a great dish where you didn’t put quite the right amount of salt. It’s not bad, but it’s off.

    Let’s begin with the strengths. De Niro as the monster is quite convincing. The makeup effects are good (making the creature look like a monster) without feeling overly Hollywood-y. Remember that the thing wasn’t put together to be ugly; its features were selected to be beautiful, it just didn’t turn out quite right. The disfigurations seem logical as well. It’s not like in “Frankenstein Unbound” where the creature’s irises are composed of bits from three different eyes. There’s a nice range of emotion in the performance as it starts off as an infant, learns the ways of the world and eventually becomes bitter and obsessed with vengeance. It’s a great looking movie with big period piece sets and many lavish costumes. I particularly enjoyed the “money shot”, the laboratory where the epic experiment takes place. It’s not just Tesla Coils and chains with levers and pulleys. We have a lot of symbolism, a clever mix of science and alchemical elements, even some different philosophies on the inner workings of the body tossed in. It never explains too much that it becomes unbelievable, but connects enough dots to let you see the logic behind it all. Look forward to the fact that all of the characters and all of the major plot points have been included. This is the version that was shown to me years ago in high school because for the most part, it’s pretty faithful and discussing the alternate paths taken helped us better understand the book’s themes.

    The first problem is that EVERY major plot point has been included, but the running time and pacing haven’t been adjusted. It’s either kind of slow with the courtship of Victor and Elizabeth, the studies at the school, the Frankenstein family dynamics, or way too fast. Characters are killed, the repercussions of their deaths are felt and they’re put to rest in the span of minutes. It’s very difficult to get emotionally invested in anyone but Frankenstein or the Monster because there’s no breathing room at all. Even with the principal characters it might just be that I’m so familiar with this story that I was able to fill in the gaps.

    You’ll be surprised to find that a horror story, this is not. Oh there are elements of a horror right at the end, but for the most part it’s a drama and it’s delivered like a drama. Kenneth Branagh directs his cast as if they were performing Shakespeare, which is fine… in a Shakespearian play. Characters screaming because of the agony contained in their hearts and dramatic shots where people walk down huge staircases covered in blood are present and feel awkward. It’s like a third arm stitched where a leg should be in this production. It doesn’t help that several actors, including Branagh are way over-the-top in the more emotional scenes.

    With the tightly packed running time, what this screenplay didn’t need was even more sub plots. In the novel Elizabeth helps further define some of the parallels between Victor and his creation. She also serves as a glimmer of hope in a story filled with murder and insidious behavior. Despite her role in the book, as important as she may be, you’re not seeing “Frankenstein” for her. Maybe if Helena Bonham Carter was given stuff to do besides act like women of Elizabeth’s status did at the time, or if some of that other material was trimmed away you wouldn’t mind so much but I was imploring my DVD player to swap out her appearances with additional scenes with the monster.

    I know I have a lot of criticisms, probably more than usual. It’s because you can see this movie come short of what it could be. It’s falls just short of being THE adaptation that we’ve been waiting for. The visuals, the terrific use of symbolism, the design of the monster, the special effects are all good. What it needed was another run through the typewriter to trim down on some of the sub plots or eliminate them altogether. I also feel like the choices towards the end and some of the implications about he monster’s learning abilities do not work. Like “Bram Stoker’s Dracula”, the title feels more like a gimmick than an honest description. I like this movie but unfortunately I don’t think I’ll be going back to it anytime soon. I still find myself recommending either the 1931 film and “Bride of Frankenstein” or the 2004 TV miniseries if you want visuals to accompany the classic science fiction horror novel. (On DVD, November 26, 2015)

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    adamwatchesmovies@  9.12.2015 age: 26-35 2,867 reviews

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