Sewn Together, Torn Apart

by C.C.

In Del Toro’s tale of horror and heart, who is truly the monster?

***Spoilers stitched throughout! If you haven’t seen it yet-read later and resurrect your curiosity after the credits roll***

One might imagine that a lab reeking of decay, with discarded body parts and floors soaked in blood, would give any man pause. Yet for Victor Frankenstein, it is simply a playground where he seeks to achieve what he believes will be his greatest triumph—conquering death.

After years of longing to adapt Frankenstein, Guillermo Del Toro brings us his version of the gothic tale with a hint of modernity — a story wrought with desire, power, and the yearning to be loved and belong. This making of the modern Prometheus perfectly traces its finger around the cycle of abuse between fathers and sons. It highlights the power of choice and shows us that men are closer to being monsters than gods.

The movie opens with a crew finding Victor Frankenstein, portrayed by Oscar Isaac(Moon Knight, Star Wars), wounded in the snow. They bring him aboard their ship, The Horisont, hoping to help him escape the creature pursuing him. The film wastes no time thrusting us into the world of monsters and men. A far cry from the dead-eyed, unsettling introduction of Boris Karloff’s Frankenstein, Jacob Elordi’s entrance is dominant—a hulking, cloaked figure emerging from the snow with the roar of a beast, flinging grown men with ease. He is a force of nature, despite existing in spite of it.

The crew rushes Victor on deck as their ranks are torn through like tissue paper. After managing to briefly halt the creature’s onslaught, Victor is taken to the captain’s quarters, where he begins to recount the fantastic tale of his creation. It is here that the film transitions into its first part - Victor’s story.

Victor’s story is a meditation on how abuse begets abuse—a theme reflected in glimpses of his childhood under a domineering father and the loss of his mother, Claire (one of two characters played by scream queen Mia Goth). Victor grows in isolation while his brother William quickly earns their father’s adoration. Victor’s life experience breeds his contempt of the natural order, challenging God as “inept” and scoffing at the idea that “the spark of creation is in God’s hands.” Ultimately, Heinrich Harlander’s(the charismatic Christopher Waltz) interest—and his funding—intensify Victor’s manic fervor, culminating in the birth of the creature.

Isaac does well to capture the duality of Victor–a volatile man that walks the line between genius and mania. In his first encounter with the creature, there is love and hope. He looks upon his creation with the adoration one reserves for a newborn child. As they embrace, he directs him to bask in the sun because it is “life.” It is a tender, hopeful moment—life born anew, possibility stretching wide—yet almost immediately, he chains the creature.

It isn’t by chance that Victor’s description of his father’s contempt almost perfectly mirrors the attributes of his creature:

 “Our raven-black hair, our deep, dark eyes. Even our quiet, at times nervous disposition seemed to exasperate him to no end.”

This echoed cruelty shapes the very nature of their relationship. In the face of his creation, Victor finds himself in a void, not knowing how to take responsibility for the very thing he gave life.

Elordi’s performance during Victor’s brutish handling adds a quiet heartbreak. His gentle disposition, the childlike movements, the gaze of someone seeing the world for the first time—these give the creature an air of innocence. He is neither beast nor angel; he simply is. He tries to follow his maker as he is abandoned—unknowing, untainted by the world—with only one word to cling to in solitude: “Victor.”

Victor’s softness for the creature is quickly traded for disdain, especially when the creature draws the affection of his love interest, Elizabeth Harlander(Mia Goth).

Elizabeth’s treatment of the creature is the complete opposite of Victor’s. Meeting him with sympathy, curiosity, and genuine care, she sits and tenderly tries to teach him her name after he offers her a brown maple leaf—a symbol of something once alive, still persisting even after its perceived death. The scene emphasizes the unique connection between the two—in her own words, “a fascinating lack of choice.” They are kindred spirits to the caged butterfly in Victor’s apartment.

Elizabeth’s character, who has an affinity for the strange and misunderstood, is a light in the shadows of this movie. Played sweetly, but unyielding, by Goth, she is the foil to Victor’s cruelty and his way of thinking. What one condemns, the other nurtures. Her empathy proves to have a lasting effect on our creature, whose story is the second half of this movie.

As the creature finds himself alone in the world, he seeks not only knowledge, but community. In a scene where he witnesses a pack of wolves attack sheep, he develops the idea that the world is cruel and “would hunt you and kill you just for being who you are.” It's a nice bit of foreshadowing for what comes next.

As he learns language—and life—from an elderly blind man (played by David Bradley, the voice of Geppetto in Del Toro’s Oscar-winning Pinocchio adaptation), we enter the Del Toro masterclass of humanizing monsters. This relationship teaches him not only the kindness and humanity in the world, but within himself. It is beautiful to witness their connection blossom and see this tortured character transformed by another’s warmth. As his internal battle wages on, pondering what he is and the shame of his creation swells, he is met with a comforting truth. Tears well in the creature's blackened eyes as the man tells him, “I know what you are, a good man, and you are my friend.” Not a dry eye in the house. 

Though Frankenstein’s central themes—man’s desire to play god, the responsibility of creation, and the perils of unbridled ambition—have been explored countless times, Del Toro approaches them with a familiar mastery. His understanding and sympathy for the monstrous and misunderstood—his constant exploration of what makes a man a beast, or a beast a man—is front and center in works like Hellboy (2004) and The Shape of Water (2017). He does not force sympathy for these supposed devils, but instead pieces together a story that allows the viewer to decide who the monster is, and ponder the question: is the “monster” truly monstrous?

Del Toro does not shy away from the moral and ethical considerations of life, but instead uses the fantastical as a device in which to explore those very things. Should men play god? Is there even a god? What responsibility is there in choice? Who voices the voiceless? Is cruelty cyclical, and can that cycle be broken? How does one forgive? And should they? What makes a monster? And do monsters always come in the grotesque packaging that one might imagine? The answers are for you to decide.

It is said that the wounded tend to wound, but it is not enough to simply understand this as fact without understanding the nuance of trauma. How it obscures love, and belonging – basic needs for survival. How it can turn even the kindest of us, into the cruelest. How when we think we are monsters, we shackle ourselves to the very things we wish we could leave behind.

In the case of Frankenstein, the story is no different. Abuse is as much a monster as the creature you fear that lurks in the shadows. Actions have consequences, and the responsibility of choice is one that weighs heavily on all of us.In the case of Victor Frankenstein, he sews his fate together stitch by stitch, a reminder that the choices we make—and the cycles we inherit—leave an indelible mark, much like a patchwork of scars on the skin.