Frankenstein and The Tragedy of Living — Side Reviews

Life and death are two uncontrollable events that are bound to each other. It defines the most basic characteristics of being a human and yet we keep denying both of them over time. There is something magnificent in creating life, destroying it and the tragedy of carrying both. Such a thing is living, and we as flawed persons we’ll do good and bad in this world. But what if we can’t die or live properly? Can we achieve compassion and love before it is too late? This is where Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein wants to go.

In another article I will focus more on how GDT’s Frankenstein feels like an amalgamation of memories of his own childhood and images of past Frankenstein movies. For now, let’s leave my absurd passion for monsters and focus on the film’s essence. I may also want to talk about how this may be the ultimate Mexican telenovela blended with a Hollywood blockbuster, if you’re curious about that.

The movie revolves around the tragedies that Victor Frankenstein had lived during his childhood. His obsession of becoming visible to his father through power and knowledge and the absence of his beloved mother had led him as far as trying to create life itself. But his idea of creating Artificial Life is altruistic, childish and egotistical.

And the same way technology is being created in today’s modernity, the creation of life will become effective, no matter the cost. Frankenstein will take advantage of the corpses, victims of war, and utilize each and every body part to his creation, while disposing of what is not needed. Even sucking the life out of each and everybody surrounding him, including his brother William and his fiancee, Elizabeth. It is a visual horror feast with no reflection on the ecological and moral consequences whatsoever.

After the pinnacle moment of life creation, we learned that, Frankenstein is unwilling to understand the essence of living. The creature is curious, flawed as a human and learns at his own pace. And yet Victor is not capable of teaching the beauty of life. morals or basic education. Which is a very striking resemblance to today’s reality with you-know-what-artificial thing, well at least our dear creature has a heart and soul. Victor is incapable of understanding love.

While wrongfully trying to seduce Elizabeth, he finds it difficult to express his feelings, which are often driven towards power. It takes an interaction with the creature to find out the meaning of joy in life, away from the vanity of life with her future husband and the shallow knowledge of Victor. As a kid, the creature finds to be curious and innocent, a purity something difficult to find in men.

The movie divides its structure in three parts where it gives the opportunity to both Frankenstein and The Creature to give their point of view of their reality. While Victor is obsessed with life, the creature is obsessed with death. Again, The movie deals with the tragedy of both things in a beautiful and complex way.

The second act becomes more an examination of the cruelty of humanity and the creature’s quest for seeking death as a way to become human. The creature learns compassion with the friends he made but also understands the lonely path he will have to live moving forward.

At the end of a treacherous and long road, both characters are broken and softened by the terrible consequences of their actions. It took a lot of time for Frankenstein to reconcile with the creature and forgive himself to understand the meaning of compassion and love.

Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein feels like a great Hollywood masterpiece equally to the horror classics of the golden era, but it also feels unique in regards to how he sees life. Life is both tragedy and beauty all the same, and over time we must carry our luggages and learn our way to know how to navigate to pursue our goals while enjoying it.

This is Leo S. Luna and welcome to Side Reviews, where I just focus on a specific aspect of a film, video game or show and deep dive into it so you can find something interesting or useful. And why Side? Because I don’t want to write and essay and spoil the work of art for you, but instead I’ll try to spark some interest smaller aspects that I consider to be great. Feel free to follow my work and also support Frankenstein in cinemas and Netflix.