MARY SHELLEY'S FRANKENSTEIN
It's pumped, baby! PUMPED!!!
I'm making this post at 3:41 AM local time. Elapsed time until the Doc makes a "pumped" joke: to be calculated. Come on, Doc, don't let me down.
A highly-anticipated adaptation of the classic novel, Kenneth Branagh's take on the tale was met with mixed - and largely indifferent - reaction. Always seemed kind of puzzling to me, considering the more extensive accolades heaped upon the altogether drearier Bram Stoker's Dracula. Hell, I love this movie - it's a far cry from perfect, and Branagh makes some poor decisions (though whether the fault for them lies with him or the screenwriters, I don't know), but overall it's a visually rich, striking work with a superhuman amount of energy.
Branagh directs, and stars as Victor Frankenstein, who...ah, you should know the story by now. Same setup, mostly same execution as the novel; this was widely hyped as "the first True Adaptation", and while it's not quite THAT faithful, it's more faithful to the source material than any other film I can think of. This is not a novel that has ever begged to be filmed as written anyway.
Like I said, Branagh is Victor, and Helena Bonham Carter (cue the all-female chorus of "Oh, she's so pretty!" when we saw a clip of this in English 201) plays his adoptive sister and love interest Elizabeth. (Victorian novels were loaded with quasi-incestuous relationships like that. I have no idea why.) Tom Hulce is his good friend Henry Clerval, a surprisingly stern and striking John Cleese is the rogue researcher who inspires Victor's work, and Robert De Niro is the Creature.
Working with a script from Frank Darabont and Steph Lady, Branagh creates a lush, sort of hyper-real environment for the action (note the almost stage-like presentation of the film's Arctic bookends). Virtually everything about this movie is preposterously overdone, but what else would I look for in such a film?
Performances are very good all around. I can think of few people more suited to play a brilliant megalomaniac than such a brilliant megalomaniac like Kenneth Branagh. (sad to say that this did not, I hear, save his performance in Wild Wild West, which not one single person liked) (note: if there's some clandestine organization of homosexuals out there who are conspiring to convert me - a possibility I strongly doubt - Branagh in this movie is their best hope of success) (scant as it is) (okay, he just reminds me of myself) For his minimal screen time, Cleese makes a startling impact; maybe it's easier to take him seriously because he hasn't done anything really funny since 1988. Carter is sympathetic and sweet, which seems at first a little removed from the lusty, id-driven action around her but feels right in the end. Hulce, unfortunately, is wasted in a nothing role and De Niro is a disappointment; more on him later.
The sets alone never fail to stir my imagination - the costumes are great too, but I rarely notice them because I'm too busy looking at the rooms that their wearers inhabit. Note the magnificently gradually-sloped staircase in Victor's family home - no bannister! The chasm-like lecture theater, the ballroom, the ice cavern, the shipwreck...wow! Production design is credited to Tim Harvey, a Branagh mainstay.
But is this a real True Adaptation of Shelley's novel? (I ask that as if it really matters, which it doesn't to me) Branagh sticks to the ol' "re-assembled body parts brought to life with electricity" thing, which we've seen before, though I don't think ever this grotesquely well (the body is immersed in embryonic fluid and studded with acupuncture needles, and the tank flooded with angered electric eels). The only movie I can think of that proposes a different way to bring the Creature to life (never explicitly addressed in the novel) is the version with Patrick Bergin and Randy Quaid. I can't think of any movie at all that restrains itself from showing us Frankenstein's secret.
There are some bad decisions that bog things down. The character of Henry Clerval is almost reduced to a footnote, no longer having any relevance to anything whatsoever. The Arctic-set bookends for the story are just filler; they've always been a waste of time, serving no apparent purpose other than to give the story that "narrative within a narrative within a narrative" thing that Victorian novels were also known for. Some of the editing is pretty sloppy, and I really could do without that "monkey hand grabs Henry" scene, which is laughable in its attempt to frighten.
There were points when I thought that the movie, already about as subtle as a kick in the nuts, went a little far even for me. When the Creature confirms that yes, it is alive and it's not going to just pass out this time, Victor is plagued by a speech from his conscience, taking the form of his nay-saying professor. I mean, gawd!
However, I tremendously enjoyed some of the departures Branagh took from the source material; particularly, the development of a love triangle of sorts in the film's climactic moments, and the frenzy of irrationality that leads up to it. "Frenzy" is exactly the word that describes the film's best moments - Victor's clearly a maniac in the true "manic" sense of the word, and when we see him plunge into his work and arguments over it, it's like a one-man school of piranha, chewing up not a little scenery in the process.
Bang-up makeup job by Mark Coulier aside, De Niro is decidedly underwhelming as the Creature - he has his moments ("I will satisfy the one, or I will indulge the other" comes to mind), but overall, he's scarcely noticeable. His decision to underplay the role is in keeping with the tradition and helps make the Creature more human, and works well in the more intimate scenes, such as that with the elderly, blind resident of a household where he secretly takes shelter. But there is such a thing as underplaying a role TOO much, and De Niro is inaudible amongst the bombast and din.
Not helping De Niro's effort is the score by Patrick Doyle (who did such a good job with Branagh's Henry V), which is intrusive and overdone. And really, I don't see how any further adaptations of Shelley's novel could possibly make a genuinely frightening film; the story and concept is so old and repeatedly done that as a horror story, I'm afraid that Frankenstein has been all tapped out for a long time.
But for all its flaws, the rather presumptuously-titled Mary Shelley's Frankenstein comes up a winner in my book. I'd rather see a huge talent like Branagh give such a work everything he's got, even if it is way too much, than see him - or anybody else - plod through it, workmanlike at best, lazily at worst. This movie is at worst, a splendidly executed ego-stroke for Branagh; hell, I wish everybody's ego-strokes were half this cool.
Extra points for getting some serious "bounce" out of a hanging late in the film.