Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1994)

 

Director: Kenneth Branagh

Screenplay: Steph Lady and Frank Darabont

Based on the novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

Cast: Robert De Niro as The Creation; Kenneth Branagh as Victor Frankenstein; Tom Hulce as Henry Clerval; Helena Bonham Carter as Elizabeth Lavenza Frankenstein; Ian Holm as Baron Alphonse Frankenstein; John Cleese as Professor Waldman; Aidan Quinn as Captain Robert Walton

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

Kenneth Branagh’s adaptation of Mary Shelley was not well regarded, least that was the image I had of this film over the years before seeing the theatrical movie. With Francis Ford Coppola a co-producer aptly, his divisive Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992) and this were a two films from a brief period of retelling the classics of horror literature. I love the film, some only know it for the ill advised decision to get Keanu Reeves to try an English accent, but these were two exist in context of the Universal horror adaptations which became iconic in themselves in popular culture, arguably the images people have of Dracula and Frankenstein's monster in popular culture than the novels which created them.

“Adaptation” is apt here too as neither is this truly adaptation the novel, Frankenstein improvising on the source. It emphasizes, if with some tragic irony, that Mary Shelley is thankfully an early figure of published horror storytelling canon, publishing this when she was in her early twenties, but that most know Frankenstein from the 1931 movie which strips away her content. Thankfully that Universal film - with a screen by Garrett Fort and Francis Edward Faragoh, with unaccredited nods to Robert Florey and John Russell - has its template from a 1927 play by Peggy Webling, a British poet and authoress, even if based on an American version by John L. Balderston, so as with Frankenstein's creator being a woman, another female author marked the legendary film. This is significant to consider as the version we all think of the take, and Frankenstein’s monster in pop culture, is absolutely the film rather than anything from the source 1818 novel. This version is even improvised from the source, which was vague with how the Frankenstein’s creature was created, whilst with Kenneth Branagh the director and also the lead, as Victor Frankenstein, he will create life from the bodies of the dead and regret doing so, all told in a way which follows the template of the novel but with its own distinctions.

Shelley’s tale has so many idiosyncrasies even not included in Branagh’s tale, like how there is a story within a story, when the creature hides in a family home in the woods and begins to learn to speak and think, about their lives connected to a Turkish merchant and his daughter in a fairytale romance. It feels like a novel of the 19th century, telling its narrative in a way very different from later storytelling in another medium, including that this was told through letters like Bram Stoker’s Dracula novel. Branagh's tale has the template, that starting at the end, an expedition to the North Pole find a figure called Victor Frankenstein, half dead, among the ice having pursued his creation there. This does not explain, as the source did, the journey to here, which may be seen as an abrupt plot hole, but beyond this, readapted by Frank Darabont, the future director of The Mist (2007), and Steph Lady, they retell Shelley’s novel whilst retaining a lot of its plot beats in its own way.

This is not a bad film, in mind this is told as a tragedy shouting to the rafters, where we see Victor Frankenstein, from a childhood loss, wishing to cheat death by experimenting in creating life. Details are certainly not within Shelley’s novel, whilst this extrapolates its own content such as John Cleese in an unexpected serious role, playing the doctor whose notes into this subject (and his brain as its laying about) are taken by Frankenstein to finish the project, here going from Shelley never writing about how the creature never being created to a bizarre choice of embryonic fluid from women and electric eels being how the life is created. This is a touch of the macabre among many which does flourish alongside the tone of a period drama. Mostly this is a very regal period tale, high minded, but has its touches of luridness like this which are memorable.

It is a solid production, compelling in mind it still streamlines Shelley’s tale, which is a masterpiece of the horror literary canon. Including the 1831 version being the version most know, the original 1818 text its own separate entity, her novel exists as a text which comes from an entirely different context of storytelling. Even this 1994 film feels of a different era, of a luxurious British-US production which is yet a very macabre horror story. It is not like Coppola’s Dracula – which is a bloody, erotic and artistically experimental film that is a one-off – but you still have a curious production which was banked as a mainstream blockbuster back in the day. It is an extravagant one for the horror genre at that, where Kenneth Branagh came to this film from the likes of Henry V (1989) and Much Ado About Nothing (1993), having worked in other genres before this film but known for adapting Shakespeare to the screen, even afterwards greatly up to the 2010s. A young Helen Bonhem Carter, having before this come from a considerable number of James Ivory films, long before her collaborations with directors like Tim Burton, is Elizabeth, the film’s love interest if with the weird touch, from the novel, that she is the adopted sister of Victor Frankenstein, which is very curious even if they are not biologically related. It sits there as a curious edge to this film, when it has to be upfront about her and Victor's love for each other, played as a powerful romance, in spite of the source tale and this explicitly talking of her having been a step sister in the midst of this.

Then there is Robert De Niro as the creature, whose take for me, whilst over the top in a way only a method actor could perform, is great, working off a very different version of this figure from pop culture, where as in the novel he gains cognisance and the ability to talk with intelligence. His role also emphasizes a key point from the source that, whilst he commits evil by killing those around his creator, Victor Frankenstein is still the true monster, rejecting his monstrosity out of pure physical appearance the moment he awoke, the stitch work and scars that change over the film as the skin heals that which separates the figure. Only dubbed the "creation" because his master never provided him a name, this figure is able to become an empathetic figure yet becomes one who will kill and lash out when deprived of humanity. The novel was published in 1818, and it is explicitly referenced in the opening text that, within the 19th century, there will be theories which will shake up many perceptions of reality, in mind to 1859 when Charles Darwin's Origins of the Species is published and becomes uncomfortable reading in Western Christianity about the concept of life. Even in a religious mind, though, whilst Darabont has dismissed the adaptation of his writing here as a wreck¹, this is still a subject here with meaning. Whether blasphemous or not, to create life, the ethics of abandoning one’s offspring, is one of the best aspects of both the novel and this adaptation. De Niro, going full method under the prosthetics, is fully investing into the dialogue, including monologues about being born into a world not told of morals and purpose, his voice as if evoking Boris Karloff’s in a coarse form and really helping a film grow in worth just from one role.

There are plenty of moments where the film, whilst with this grandious tone, is also ridiculous. This is not “out there” as Francis Ford Coppola’s Dracula film, but it is neither subtle. Once the monster is holding a still beating bloody heart in his hand having ripped it out of someone’s chest, it is clear the film is going to be very literal. Working around beats of the novel, it improvises, like setting the creation of the creature during a cholera outbreak, or how one victim of the creature, a figure named Justine, had a full trial in the novel for a murder she did not commit, only to be lynched here It also completely improvises a new ending which is lurid and grandiose. [Major Spoilers] Additional horror in resurrecting one’s wife, whilst unsubtle, is a really morbid morality twist, which is compelling in terms of a downfall for Victor Frankenstein, also allowing Helen Bonham Carter a huge change of performance, already strong, as a result in prosthetics, ending this version on a high note. [Spoilers End] With a low expectation for this film, it does present a lot of virtues, and for me, arguably is a stronger film from the nineties era of horror cinema for its grand minded tone, one whose lack of subtlety is not even a detraction, merely a heightener of the text. The fact we never got any further adaptations of classic horror literature from this time in this series, those with Francis Ford Coppola involved, which could contrast their grandeur with adult content, is sad in hindsight as, in taking their material seriously, they gain a compelling nature to them. Dracula is the better from the two, but Frankenstein is not a film deserving to be maligned either.

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1) Frank Darabont on The Shawshank Redemption, by Erik Bauer for Creative Screenwriting, and publishd on April 22nd 2016. Quoting a passage from the interview on this subject:

"[Frank Darabont] I’ve described Frankenstein as the best script I ever wrote and the worst movie I’ve ever seen. That’s how it’s different.

There’s a weird doppleganger effect when I watch the movie. It’s kind of like the movie I wrote, but not at all like the movie I wrote. It has no patience for subtlety. It has no patience for the quiet moments. It has no patience period. It’s big and loud and blunt and rephrased by the director at every possible turn."