Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein has quickly become one of the year’s most beloved films, and, after its five recent nominations in the recent Golden Globes announcement (wins and losses pending), it’s likely that it will become a favourite this awards season. Perhaps, with its horror connections, it will be this year’s dark horse for the awards run. That’s a bit of a problem.
Before I continue down this line of thought, I should mention that Frankenstein is one of my favourite novels, and Guillermo Del Toro is one of my favourite filmmakers, so I am saying this all with a broken heart. During my first viewing of the latest adaptation of Mary Shelley’s landmark book, I soon realised something that I found myself surprised by: it felt wrong. I didn’t log the film on my Letterboxd immediately after finishing because I wanted to process it all. What didn’t feel right? Oscar Isaac was fantastic, as always, and I had watched it for the entirety of its 150-minute runtime, so why I had been so distracted?
It’s an adaptation, of course there are differences and changes, and I’ve found myself preferring adaptations in some occasions (looking at you, Call Me By Your Name). After some rumination, I found that one of the things that stuck out to me in this version was the amount of physical punishment Victor Frankenstein receives as he becomes more corrupted. It wasn’t until I read Kathryn Bromwich’s fantastic article in The Guardian that I realised what had felt wrong: the film echoes Victor’s moral decay with his physical ‘decay’, which among other things, can be read quite easily as ableist. But in the interest of not repeating Bromwich’s, but rather building upon it, I would like to argue that this misses the central point of the story.
Frankenstein’s Monster is an array of mismatched body parts that should be ‘beautiful’ but turn out to be ‘horrific’ to Victor. Yet, despite this monstrous physical appearance, the Creature is much more sympathetic than Victor. By giving Victor Frankenstein a prosthetic leg and facial scarring among other injuries that physically ‘deform’ the character, this perceived punishment serves to do no more than rehash the old stereotype of deformity and difference being associated with badness. Even if Victor redeems himself in the Creature’s eyes by the film’s end, the idea that disability should reflect moral decay is uncomfortable, and left me with a sick feeling in my stomach the more I thought about it.
In doing this, the film seems to miss the notion in the text that it’s not the outer appearance of beings that dictate their goodness, but what’s inside. It’s a cliché to say this nowadays, but still an important lesson. Guillermo del Toro is a wonderful filmmaker and has continually made films that show how ‘monsters’ are often the kindest and most gentle beings in this world, which is why his handling of disability in Frankenstein is so disappointing.
Bio:
Conrad is a bibliophile, cinephile, and all-round pop-culture sponge. When he’s not watching films or working his day job, he can be found writing a lot (seriously, like a lot) or running.
