Kenneth Branagh’s Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (still with me?), attempts to fashion another version of the classic gothic novel to little argumentative point aside from theatricality (verses cinematically) painting a gothic canvas. The work posits everything including the kitchen sink while too many cooks bump into and harangue one another as Branagh giddily bounces back and forth on either side of the camera while forgetting to direct De Niro using the outline of Frank Darabont’s flaccid screenplay atop looking nervously over his shoulder at the producer, Francis Ford Coppola. As the mile-a-minute effort thrives and undulates, unsure of which genre it will ultimately decide upon, even the secondary cast finds itself cramped as Helena Bonham Carter, Ian Holm, Tom Hulce, Aidan Quinn, and John Cleese stumble confusedly amid the overlong proceedings.
After his mother (Cherie Lunghi) dies, Victor Frankenstein (Kenneth Branagh) vows to thwart death by finding a way to create everlasting life. He leaves his love, his adopted sister named Elizabeth (Helena Bonham Carter), and goes to university where his mentor, Professor Waldman (John Cleese), is murdered, which serves as a catalyst to Frankenstein’s experiments. After successfully reanimating a collection of dead tissues (Robert De Niro), Frankenstein leaves his creation to perish amid the cholera outbreak which has spread throughout the land. However, the doctor’s experiment finds refuge in the woods as he learns to read and write as he ponders upon the plight of humanity before discovering his Frankenstein’s journal, which reveals the creation’s genesis. Frankenstein’s experiment then vows vengeance upon his maker.
Branagh’s film attempts to do too much as it futilely merges the more potent contents of most every preceding cinematic rendition Shelley’s masterpiece, beginning with Thomas Edison’s 1910 edition of the tale and ending with Roger Corman’s 1990 Frankenstein Unbound. Much like a greatest hits album, the work doesn’t coincidentally congeal as a result. For example, the film begins with a framed narrative, as does Shelley’s novel, which introduces an Ahab-esque captain, Robert Walton (Quinn). Obviously, Walton is intended to serve as a foreshadow to Frankenstein later in the film as well as a parallel the mad scientist, yet is entirely unnecessary (which previous directors realized, having omitted the cinematic bookends). Once the meat of the film begins, the narrative then tosses the viewer back and forth from a polar expedition, to a dime-story romance (which attempts to be taboo in its depiction of brother-sister relations but by contemporary standards merely comes across as trite), to a period university, before casting us into an uneven moment of terror. This is not to say that a film will automatically be a failure for moving quickly as it attempts to defy genre categorization, i.e. Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction, Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver, and the Coen Brother’s Fargo. However, the director must control the work as it moves from room to room, which Branagh, amid all of the fireworks, fails to do.
Sadly, Branagh and Darabont, in their desire to remain faithful to the source material (which even this is abandoned toward the end, thus making the viewer question why he or she was forced to watch now arbitrary scenes which were forced at best), drain the tale of it potency, not realizing what James Whale did six decades before: a literal translation of the novel to the screen will not aptly function. All of the themes which has held audiences’ fascination throughout the centuries, striking a cord with our universal unconsciousness, are diluted as the father-son bond, Biblical parable, and chasm created between man’s humanity via science are all downplayed due to the fact that Branagh, attempting to make the definite version of the story, has too many irons even in his fire. Case in point, Branagh, who had a hand in the script, never allows his character to be mad. In short, he’s a humanitarian throughout, his primary concern always being his battle against death. As a consequence, he never convinces the viewer that he is ready to arm wrestle God for the title at any moment amid appearing bare-chested onscreen, as if ready to pose for the cover of a Harlequin cover. (This isn’t to say that the character must be mad, but Branagh never fills this void with an adequate substitute, not even in the character of his monster.) Thus, from what we’re given, the only megalomania that exists is in Branagh’s evaluation of himself.
To add insult to injury, De Niro as Frankenstein’s creation never poses as a threat until the worthy end (which the viewer is forced to wait over two hours to reach), nor does he evoke the viewer’s sympathy in that he is too able both mentally and physically. With this in mind, the characters which litter Branagh’s film are the “polite” versions of people amid a scientific and social upheaval who, in the Shakepearian director’s eyes, are handling the predicament all too well. The failure of the production to arouse any inherent interest in the viewer is evident in Cleese’s characterization of Waldman being the most fascinating figure in the film even though he is secondary. The only other aspect of the film which forced me to open my sagging eyelids was, however ironical, a stairwell seen in the Frankenstein mansion, which is a throwback to Robert Wiene’s Caligari or, more exactingly, Carl Boese’s The Golem.
Branagh bit off more than he could chew because the film crumbles in upon itself, much like the characters’ circumstance at the climax, due to Branagh’s reverting back to his Shakespearian resume (his understanding of literature apparently stops two hundred years prior to Shelley’s pen) as the overly theatrical presentation of the gothic novel is maimed in post-production as the editing, especially at the offset of the film, is choppy at best. Andrew Marcus, the film’s editor, can’t be entirely faulted here because of the undoubtedly daunting amount of cinematic mishmash handed to him from the director after the film wrapped.
Ultimately, the question stands, “What is the point of Branagh’s Frankenstein outside of pitching in another version of the tale?” Kenneth Branagh’s work offers little to the viewer outside of theatrical eye candy which, considering the source material, should be much, much more. What is more painful than the empathy we aren’t having for De Niro’s character is the fact that the actor wasted his time with such a poorly written role atop watching the director fawn over himself in a condemnable role which never allows the actor to be seen in a negative light. In short, a better use of one’s time would be to contemplate what the various individuals involved could have been doing during this production.
-Egregious Gurnow
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