La Jornada – ‘Frankenstein’ is for me the culmination of a part of my life and career: Del Toro

50 years ago the boy Guillermo del Toro learned about the Gothic work of Mary Shelley: Frankensteinfrom that moment on the creature pursued him and wandered through his thoughts during these five decades. Del Toro sought to trap it in his large collection of monsters, where the oversized head of the Frankenstein Boris Karloff’s classic occupied a dominant place, like a totem. Sometimes Guillermo del Toro thought that this persistently large image often went against his conscious will, against himself as a person and, best of all, as a filmmaker.

The man from Guadalajara, Guillermo del Toro, grew up and became a creator praised by critics and loved by the public. His recent film, the 13th of his career, is precisely Frankenstein. “Absolutely in all my films since Chronos until Pinocchio there are themes in common with Frankenestein. “Everything leads me here,” Del Toro confesses in an exclusive interview with The Day about its visual and interpretive ode to the character of Shelley and at the same time a very faithful version of the original novel ever made.

In the talk he was asked what he needed to do Frankenstein: “five decades of waiting, a lot of patience, more than 100 days of filming, hundreds of costumes, four countries, twenty-three Canadian locations, 2,830 days to build the laboratory, 1,200 days to build the tower. But above all, a lot of patience.”

Guillermo del Toro’s visual and imaginative style places him as one of the most talented and meticulous contemporary directors, Frankenstein He demonstrates it with great elegance, strength and effusion:

–¿Con Frankenstein Do you feel like you’ve reached your optimal cinematic vision?

–For me, yes, but that is subjective. This is for me the culmination of a part of my life and my career.

Frankenstein was screened in Mexico during the recent Morelia International Film Festival, where it was attested that Del Toro not only revisits one of the germinal creatures of Gothic horror, but also gives it humanity, where the monsters show more humanity, although their face and body are covered by scars, staples and shocking seams, to the extent that the creature (Jacob Elordi) is the most attractive character, along with an iridescent and sensitive Elizabeth (Mia Goth) and Victor Frankenstein (Oscar Isaac), the true monster, villainous and insensitive.

For Guillermo del Toro to realize and listen to his creative voice inside his head during the filming of Frankenstein He was determined: “I was one hundred percent attentive to accidents or coincidences to reveal the very will of the film.”

–In a sense, do you think that Frankenstein Would it also be a reflection of motherhood, since Shelley was pregnant when she wrote the piece?

–It is rather that anguish of prayer without feminine interference and the fusion of death and birth, which began with his own and the death of his mother 11 days after she was born.

In fact, during the performance at the FICM, Guillermo sent a message to his Mexican audience, which will be the most important audience for Frankenstein: “where we are and who we are changes as life sculpts us with blows and God dictates the form. When I was a child and very Catholic I thought about telling the story of God the father and God the son united by the investigation of pain and death, in that last moment of doubt on the cross, but through Frankenstein. I thought about talking about how strange it is to be the son of a man who is difficult to decipher, but over time, while I was still acting like a son, I became a father. I too, and despite avoiding him for decades, discovered my father in the mirror when I turned 42. I had to stop the cycle of pain before passing it on to my daughters and I discovered two powerful tools: forgiveness and acceptance, all of this is in Frankenstein. Curious how one ends up being the hero and the villain of one’s own movie, but also how redemption never comes late, it only comes when it has to come.”

–How do you feel creatively after completing this pursuit of Frankenstein. What will you focus on?

–“I feel like in postpartum. Looking for new horizons. Starting the version stop motion del libro de Kazuo Ishiguro, The buried giant, and adapting a film for Oscar Isaac: Fury. But at the beginning of November I will be around capirucha”.