Kenneth Branagh’s Frankenstein

Recently, the question was raised about film adaptations of favorite books. Because of that and because I just recently reread Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, I thought it would be fun to watch Kenneth Branagh’s 1994 adaptation of the novel, which attempts to be closer to the book than many earlier adaptations.

Despite the movie’s attempt to be more faithful to the book than other interpretations, there are some key differences. For example, in the novel, Henry Clerval is a friend from Geneva who joins Victor Frankenstein at college in Ingolstadt after the monster is created. In the movie, Clerval is a fellow medical student that started about the same time as Victor. Another difference is that Professor Waldman dies in the movie and his brain is used for the creature.

Another key difference between the film and the book is that time is significantly compressed in the movie. In the novel, years pass between Victor’s arrival in Ingolstadt and the penultimate scene that occurs on the night of his wedding to Elizabeth. Also, The action happens over a much wider range of geography. In the movie, all of this seems to happen over the course of weeks and the settings are confined to Ingolstadt, Geneva, and the North Pole. Also, Branagh expanded significantly on the penultimate scene—the moment that leads Victor to chase the monster across the ice of the North Pole.

The time compression makes some sense given the scope of a movie as opposed the scope of a novel. For the most part I had no problem with that, though I might have enjoyed it more if they had found a way to compress it a little less.

An interesting element of the novel is that in spite of the fact that Victor is reanimating corpses, it doesn’t really explore the theme of immortality or life extension. The corpses are treated simply as inanimate matter. The movie not only explores this theme but pulls it to the forefront, which explains the reason for the change to the penultimate scene.

I thought the cast of the movie was great. Branagh himself played Victor, Helena Bonham Carter was Elizabeth, Robert DeNiro was the creature and John Clease was Professor Waldman, and that’s just the beginning of the fine cast. Many of them give over-the-top performances, but really that seems to fit the fact that the story is a Gothic romance.

The bottom line is that the book and the movie have key differences. Although I enjoyed the book more than the movie, I’m hard-pressed to say that one is “better” than the other in this case. The movie explored the important themes of the novel and even expanded on one that seemed neglected. It got the period right and provided gorgeous visuals of everything from the lab to the Frankenstein manner in Geneva to the Swiss Alps.

I hesitate to judge whether Kenneth Branagh’s adaptation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein would be enjoyable for someone who hasn’t read the book, but as someone who has, I found it an engaging way to spend two hours reliving a novel I enjoyed.

Frankenstein Revisited

While working on a new story a couple of weeks ago, I decided to go back and reread Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein. I was particularly interested in revisiting Victor Frankenstein’s motivations in the novel and descriptions of his laboratory and working conditions. It’s been nearly 20 years since I last read Frankenstein and it was fascinating to take a fresh look at this novel that has had such a strong influence on both science fiction and horror.

The photo shows my cherished copy of Frankenstein illustrated by Berni Wrightson, introduced by Stephen King, and published by Marvel Comics. It’s a beautiful edition and reprints are widely available. For my reread, I downloaded a copy from Project Gutenberg, so I could more easily carry it around on my Kindle. Here is their page for Frankenstein: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/84

The plot of the novel has often been obscured by the famous Hollywood adaptations, so a brief, hopefully spoiler-free synopsis is worthwhile. The novel opens as Captain Robert Walton is leading an expedition to the North Pole. They see a mysterious figure traverse the ice on a dog sled. Some time later, the ice breaks up and they find another man on a dog sled barely alive, floating on the ice. They pull the man aboard and discover he’s Victor Frankenstein, a scientist from Geneva, Switzerland. Frankenstein proceeds to tell Walton how he came to be at the North Pole.

Frankenstein was a happy youth, surrounded by friends, including his adopted cousin Elizabeth Lavenza and their friend Henry Clerval. He reads extensively and discovers books about alchemy in his father’s library. Once he reaches his teens, Frankenstein goes to university at Ingolstadt where he learns about then-modern science. He gets the idea to combine his knowledge of alchemy with modern natural philosophy concerning chemistry and electricity to create life. He creates a body from cadavers and soon succeeds with his plans. However, he is so horrified by his creation that he turns from it and it runs off into the night.

Frankenstein goes on about his life for about two years, then is called home when his little brother is found murdered and the prime suspect is the family’s beloved housekeeper Justine. There is a trial and Justine is condemned to death. Soon after the trial, Frankenstein is hiking among the glaciers and is reunited with the monster, who tells him what he’s been doing for the past two years.

The monster went to a village and quickly found himself shunned. He hides near a small cottage and observes the DeLacy family. Observing them over the course of a year, he learns to speak, read and write. However, when he finally decides to make himself known to them, he is chased away. Some time later, he rescues a little girl from a stream, only be shunned and chased away by her father. All of this causes the creature to seek revenge on the man who created him.

The novel had much more impact on me now than it did twenty years ago. Some of that is simply that I’ve read more widely and understood more of the references. Some of it has to do with the fact that I’m now a parent. In many ways, the novel stands as a critique of people who create a child, then abandon it to their own self-interest. The creature is intelligent, but he doesn’t know love and he doesn’t learn to govern his violent emotions.

Frankenstein’s motivations were fascinating. His childhood interest in alchemy is scorned by one professor, while somewhat indulged by another. Together, this leads to Victor finding a way to merge the ancient arts with modern science. After he creates life, and the creature has gone out into the world, it’s interesting to see the way that the society of Frankenstein’s day allowed him to avoid responsibility for his creation until it was too late. There may have been no TV, computers, or video games, but Frankenstein found plenty to occupy himself with for large periods of time between encounters with the creature.

The creature himself appears doomed to his fate by his horrific appearance, but I find myself wondering if he would have turned into the “vile daemon” of the novel if he had been nurtured by a loving father rather than scorned as an unwanted child.

The experiments themselves were also interesting. Shelley avoids detailed description of the apparatus. It’s clear chemistry and cadavers are involved. Likewise, it’s implied that electricity is used, but she doesn’t explain in detail. What I found particularly interesting is that Frankenstein creates life not in a remote castle as depicted in the movies, but first in his apartment in Ingolstadt, then later attempts to recreate his experiment in a two-room thatch hovel in the Orkneys.

Perhaps more interesting than the experiments from a writer’s perspective were the descriptions of travel and how long it took to get from one place to another and how readily this time was accepted by people. There are some good tidbits here for writers who want to explore historical fiction.

Although the novel is often cited as discussing the problems of science gone wrong, the line that sticks with me most from was spoken by the creature to Victor: “You are my creator, but I am your master; obey!” To my mind, that’s the line that brings the novel home to everyone. How many of us have, at one time or another turned away from our parents or even God—no matter our specific religious beliefs—and made just that demand?

If you only know Frankenstein from the movies, you should definitely go check out the novel. If it has been some time since you’ve read the novel, I think it’s one worthy of a second look. I definitely enjoyed rediscovering this classic novel.