Dazzling visual and sentimental pyrotechnics

And Del Toro enters the story with all his cinematic bulk in a wonderful prologue, of absolute visual grandeur and with a narrative power that will not be interrupted until the end. His script, magnificent, has the success of applying to the story that added value of the point of view, which divides the film into two blocks, the one narrated by Doctor Frankenstein and the one that his monster lives and tells, which provides the sensation of folding a mirror that reflects the entire essence of the work, from the bipolarity of creator and creature, euphoria, energy, depression, irritation…, to the ideas that They underlie paternity, birthright, loneliness, identity and (Del Toro’s trademark addition) not only immortality but also the tragic and melancholic impossibility of dying.

The setting, atmosphere and planning are spectacular (Dan Laustsen’s photography and Alexandre Desplat’s music contribute greatly to this), and the meticulousness with which the director treats the texture of the period and the twisted, romantic, extreme, gothic character of the characters ensures that bombast and beauty are balanced in what is a perfect combination of terror, wonder and humanism.

There are some passages, like the one about the wolves that attack the cabin, in which Guillermo del Toro cannot help but be consistent with himself and have fun with the ‘video game’, or like the excess of passion that the character of Elizabeth (Mia Goth) exudes, as if she had arrived there from some 21st century humanitarian organization. And all the black and sordid paraphernalia of the experiments with corpses and the organization of the ‘puzzle’ are well conceived visually, a section of the story in which a filmmaker like Guillermo del Toro, so inclined to not leave a knife unstuck, could have covered himself in the carnage and he doesn’t do it (much) or at least he doesn’t let the image lose its beauty.

One of the most involved chapters in this ‘Frankenstein’ is that of if its two protagonists, Oscar Isaac and Jacob Elordi, creator and creature, could contribute something to the already very long list of actors that cinema has put in those characters. Oscar Isaac plays a peculiar, different Doctor Victor Frankenstein, with great traumas and emotional shortcomings, with enormous physical and psychological darkness and with an obsession beyond the scientific to fight against death. And Jacob Elordi enters the creature with even greater singularity, with an imposing appearance but far from the monstrous and with a more complex sentimental range and who perceives his tragedy as the immortal Prometheus himself. It has a curious character in the plot, Christoph Waltz, that of Harlander, patron of the experiment, and who resolves with that expression so common and so characteristic of him between insensitivity and sarcasm. And also appears, for a moment and with the rope around his neck, Santiago Segura.

A version of ‘Frankenstein’ that, in addition to being brilliant and spectacular, has allowed Guillermo del Toro, its creator, to meditate on his own relationship with his ‘creatures’ and reflect, if you want to see, those conflicts and commitments of the human creator with his own work.