So this was a weekend of heroes for me: heroes and their complicated relationships with their fathers and the angst of genius. We had the Bruce Springsteen movie, which I loved, and now Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein.
To say that I've been excited for Frankenstein does little to convey just how mind explodingly hyped I am for just about anything Guillermo does — but especially THIS movie. Except for At the Mountains of Madness, this is the story I most associate with GDT, even before I knew he was going to do it. He's just a Frankenstein kinda guy. He's got that same blend of emotional, misunderstood-monster energy and tortured brilliance.
It seems to be a common thread among my creative heroes, tortured geniuses. Like Bruce, Guillermo has made it his mission to convey an extreme amount of empathy through his art. Not just getting across his own emotional output, but getting you to think about the level of compassion you're willing to give people you might consider difficult to relate to.
GDT's message in pretty much everything he does is that monsters have feelings, too. Whether they're literal creatures or human monsters, Del Toro seems to be deeply concerned with getting you to care about people you might have dismissed.
I love that. I love it so much.
I've never been particularly invested in the novel Frankenstein (which is silly considering a whole book based on The Bride of Frankenstein). I respect it, and I love the impact it's had on storytelling and horror, and Mary Shelley was a fascinating, important figure in literature, no doubt about that. However, I do really love the James Whale movies, Frankenstein and The Bride of Frankenstein.
This movie made me reconsider the novel. Not just because the movie was great, but because I now want to find out exactly how and why it motivated GDT to make THIS movie, which I connected with on a deeply personal level.
I've never seen a Frankenstein movie so concerned with making you understand the monster's perspective, all while keeping the monster a monster. This was a movie about deep pain and loneliness, and the desperate need to be seen and loved, not just as a son, but as a human being.
Which brings us to one of the many surprises of the movie: Jacob Elordi as The Creature. I was a little familiar with him before this movie, but not very. I'd seen Saltburn and Pricilla, which were both good movies, and I thought he was excellent in them, but I wasn't particularly aware of his career in general. This changed that. He was incredible. Watching him play the creature was like an amazing piece of performance art. The way he moved his body and conveyed innocence, endless love, and pain through the extensive makeup was some of the best creature acting I've ever seen. Every time he moved, it was both disjointed and smooth, like a bird, as though his hobbled-together body didn't quite measure up correctly. His eyes had the sweet vulnerability of a child, but the tortured child of a negligent, abusive father. Watching the way Victor (played by a wildly enthusiastic and fascinating Oscar Issac) treats the Creature over the course of the movie was an emotional and healing journey for me.
And my god, the visuals! This movie was the kind of experience where every time we were introduced to a new creative choice, I almost gasped. Each frame of this movie is stunning. The costumes, makeup, styling, and sets were all perfect. I hope this movie wins fifty Oscars.
Ultimately, Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein is the best kind of passion project. One that goes back to his childhood. That's something I can relate to on a deeply peronal level. I have stories like that. I have projects and ideas that got wedged in the machinery of who I am at an early age and never left. Those stories became part of the fabric of who I am. For me, it was Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and The Shining. For Guillermo, it was Frankenstein and the stories of HP Lovecraft.
One thing I read recently was that the other passion project that GDT has been trying to get made for as long as I've been aware of him is HP Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness, which he's recently said is completely dead. The thing is, it's dead because he's moved on.
"To be completely candid, I don’t know that I want to do it after this,” is what he said about it, and I love that for him. I love that evolution. At the Mountains of Madness is a decent story, but I think he's better than that now. He's invested in deeper ideas and feelings than just paranoia and fear, and we're all luckier for it.
HP Lovecraft, while a brilliant writer, was emotionally stunted and problematic to say the least. Guillermo is the opposite of emotionally stunted. He's deeply in tune with humanity and empathy, and Lovecraft simply doesn't provide those elements in his writing. Maybe GDT could find a way to infuse some humanity into that story, but I don't think he should. Frankenstein is more his lane now, and I couldn't be happier.
Watching his evolution as an artist, especially over the last ten years, has been a gift, and I feel blessed to get to live at the same time as him. The guy is on fire, and I'm so happy to get to watch his creative output. I hope he keeps doing it for many, many years.
CINEMATIC FACES
I've been drawing a lot lately. For some reason, I've become interested in drawing straight on faces from movies. I'm working my way through some of my favorite Hollywood faces, and I've started a page on my site to store them all.
That's about it for today!