A ‘Frankenstein’ infused with passion

 

   Throughout the first half of Guillermo del Toro's long-awaited Frankenstein, I kept waiting for an aria to pierce Alexandre Desplat's heavy orchestral score. For the record, a variety of operas based on the Frankenstein story have been written. Add a few arias, and del Toro's movie happily could have joined their ranks.

   But, no, del Toro presents his operatic melodrama without anyone breaking into song.

  Instead, Frankenstein serves as the director’s adaptation of and meditation on the classic Mary Shelley story, which first appeared in 1818, spurring more than 200 years of sustained interest. That’s a hell of a run.

   A del Toro dream project, Frankenstein swells with passion. I guess that's notable -- a director displaying palpable enthusiasm for the dark corners of the stories that inspire him. There's no question that del Toro -- The Devil's Backbone (2001), Pan's Labyrinth (2006), The Shape of Water (2017) along with movies such as Blade II (2002), Hellboy (2004), and Crimson Peak (2015) -- has built a visionary body of work that's often rooted in mythic aspiration.

    In Frankenstein, del Toro puts his considerable visual skills to work, but adds another dimension: He splits the story in two, telling it from the perspectives of both Victor Frankenstein (Oscar Isaac) and his monstrous creation (Jacob Elordi).

   To quote the current lingo, the poor creature has “his own truth,” and insists on sharing it.

    Of the two stories in del Toro’s 149-minute opus, the monster -- listed in the credits as The Creature -- gets the best of things, emerging as a near holy innocent in a corrupt human world. Stitched together from the carcasses of dead soldiers, The Creature learns to speak as he wrestles with questions of identity and loneliness. 

   If the movie has any heart, it belongs to the monster. NBA tall and rendered in cool tones reminiscent of a cadaver before rot sets in, Elordi becomes the movie’s sorrowful centerpiece, a wounded outlier whose torment never can be eased. The poor creature can’t even die.

      Abuse, of course, breeds fury. The Creature's super-strength comes off as the justifiable rage of a character whose very existence represents an act of exploitation. Frankenstein keeps The Creature chained in the nether regions of his laboratory, denying him even rudimentary freedoms.

    Del Toro guides us toward the story's all-too-obvious irony: The monster may be more human than the mercilessly driven Frankenstein, played by Isaac with a verve that borders on hysteria.

   Not surprisingly, del Toro loads the movie with statements (sets, costumes and make-up) that burst with Gothic mood and intent, beginning his story with a bracing chill. A Danish sea captain (Lars Mikkelson) tries to free his ship, which has become stuck in Arctic ice. Enter the badly wounded Frankenstein, whose presence and condition will be explained later. 

       Once tucked away on the ship and after a tussle with the now tattered monster, Frankenstein tells his story, narrating the tale until The Creature catches up with his creator and delivers his side of the story.

      Backstory accumulates, fragments of narrative stitched together in quilt-like fashion. We learn of young Victor’s abuse at the hands of his father (Charles Dance), a gifted surgeon and brutal taskmaster who schools his son in anatomy. He disciplines young Frankenstein with a stick across the face lest he damage the hands the boy will need for his own surgical career. 

       Later, Frankenstein will meet Harlander (Christoph Waltz), the patron who wants to fund research into reanimating the dead.

      We also meet Victor’s younger brother William (Felix Kammerer) and his fiancee Elizabeth (Mia Goth),  who happens to be Harlander's niece. Recognized as a rare beauty, Elizabeth has a scientific mind and a keen interest in insects. Frankenstein’s pheromones kick in, but Elizabeth remains loyal to her betrothed.

      Elizabeth quickly develops a sympathetic interest in Frankenstein’s creation, raising another question:  Are humans more than an accumulation of body parts?  She surveys Frankenstein's body and asks which part contains the soul.

     As for body parts, they abound.

     When Frankenstein moves into the tower that serves as his laboratory, del Toro embraces the opportunity to show the products of war carnage that Victor accumulates for his experiment, a task made easier by Waltz's Harlander, an arms dealer already familiar with ravaged battlefields. 

      A psychological motif makes its presence felt as two father/son relationships are juxtaposed: Victor’s relationship with his tyrannical father and The Creature's relationship with Victor, who summons the monster with an assist from an elaborate lightning rod constructed in the tower he has turned into his laboratory.

      The film’s emotional heart beats loudest during touching scenes in which the creature, fleeing after Frankenstein tries to destroy him, is sheltered by a blind old man (David Bradley) who expands The Creature's vocabulary and teaches him the meaning of the word “friend.” 

      No matter how wobbly the build-up, Del Toro sticks the ending.  Isaac’s performance calms down, and the movie sounds a melancholy yet slightly hopeful note. 

      I wish I could say that Frankenstein was gripping throughout its entire 149-minute length. Moreover, del Toro's impassioned approach arrives with a downside; it sometimes feels overblown, an exercise in overstatement that gushes rather than unfolds.

       Honesty compels me to confess that Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein (1974) has made it difficult for me to watch any Frankenstein movie without playing an alternate comedy version in my mind, a problem I presume most viewers won’t have. 

       My idiosyncrasies aside,  del Toro's boldly conceived version of Shelley's first novel finds some of the tragic grandeur in an oft-told tale. Imposing as Frankenstein can be, I couldn't help wondering, though, whether all the effort couldn’t be reduced to something narrower and much less lofty: two guys struggling with unresolvable daddy issues.

A slow and overlong 'Nightmare Alley'

     It’s no surprise that director Guillermo del Toro has remade Nightmare Alley,  a 1947 noir movie starring Tyrone Power in a role intended to challenge the actor's glamor-boy image. 

     The material, from a 1946 novel by William Lindsay Gresham,  seems well-suited for Guillermo (Pan's Labyrinth and The Shape of Water), a director who often draws in dark, bizarre strokes.

     Beginning in the world of low-rent carnivals,  the 1947 movie delved into the world of fraud and exploitation, spreading its story across two environments, one seedy, the other more decorous. The leap suggested that greed and ambition knew no borders.

    More than 70 years later, del Toro has taken the original 111-minute movie and turned it into a 140-minute trip into sideshow culture.

    The difference in length can be taken as emblematic of the way that cult or noir creations have muscled their way into the mainstream. Black-and-white photography turns to color in the hands of cinematographer Dan Lausten, and following his usual bent, del Toro creates images that are both detailed and bizarre.

    De Toro gives his movies their own worlds and Nightmare Alley is no exception -- which is not to say that the movie can be taken as an unalloyed success. More on that later.

    The story twists its way through a variety of complications. Lost and on the run, Stan Carlisle (BradleyCooper) stumbles into a carnival presided over by Clem Hoatley (Willem Dafoe). Hoatley specializes in displaying deformed fetuses he preserves in alcohol. His favorite: a three-eyed baby he calls Enoch. 

     Stan learns the carnival trade when he meets Pete Krumbein (David Strathairn) and his wife Zeena (Toni Collette). Zeena quickly seduces Stan, who immediately senses opportunity in a special code Pete devised to create the illusion of mind-reading.

     Money and fame, the twin engines of American dreaming, loom.

     Needing a helpmate for his career, Stan takes up with Molly (Rooney Mara), a carnival worker with a grotesque occupation. She makes her living surviving electrocutions as part of the carnival’s sideshow repertoire.  

     Mary falls for Stan’s charms and the two head for Chicago. Stan ignores the warnings of strongman Bruno (Ron Perlman) who sees himself as Mary's protector. Bruno threatens harm should Mary be hurt.

     Unfazed, Stan trades his carney clothes for a tuxedo; he headlines a popular nightclub act as a premier mentalist.

    One of the movie’s running themes centers sin and hellfire or their metaphoric equivalents as found in 1930s America. 

     Consider “the Geek,” the most desperate of souls, a pitiful fellow who carnie bosses steer into the lowliest of employments, hooking them with drink and addictive drugs. A filthy caged man, the Geek bites the heads off live chickens, an act shown by del Toro but never seen in the original. 

    The Geek becomes a symbol of condemnation; he represents the hideous fate of sinners and Stan provides plenty of reason for us to consider him a sinner.

    In Chicago, the movie adopts a new look, displaying fabulous Art Deco interiors and upscale hotel rooms where Stan and Mary are living the good life. It also begins to drag — albeit with a bright spot.

    Stan encounters Lilith Ritter (Cate Blanchett), a sophisticated Chicago therapist who tapes her sessions with her clients. Stand suggests a partnership in which the tapes will help him bilk the wealthy, notably a rich man (Richard Jenkins) who’s guilt-ridden about the death of his wife.

    Note: Is there anything Blanchett can’t do. She makes a great femme fatale.

    You needn’t be a mind reader to see where all of this is headed, but the film has less to do with story than with ambiance, seedy carnival life juxtaposed against the sleek world to which Stan aspires. Cooper makes it clear that Stan's ambition quickly can slide into desperation.

    Del Toro’s screenplay gives Stan a motivational backstory but it allows scenes to play out to the point where impatience sets in. 

    Now, I’m going to get to the hub of things, belatedly I suppose, probably because I respect del Toro's talent and commitment to cinema. 

   Nightmare Alley limps its way through a story that needed to move quickly, vanquishing the opportunity for second thoughts or over-evaluation.

    At times, del Toro’s images seem frozen in their dark beauty. Del Toro has made a noir movie in which ugliness is aestheticized. A carnival becomes a lurid dreamscape and the Deco interiors of Chicago are airless, so highly designed they can feel sterile.

     Slow and dawn-out, Del Toro's version sometimes suffocates under the director's lavish treatment. Nightmare Alley is less a neo-noir outing than a brilliant display of lighting and production design. 

    Noir had the high-contrast sheen of lurid pulp. Del Toro’s version inflates the atmosphere and deflates the movie as a result. By the end, he almost turns Nightmare Alley into something I wouldn't have thought possible, noir as coffee-table book.

A fairy tale from Guillermo del Toro

The Shape of Water, a romantic fantasy about a cleaner and a "monster.''

Guillermo del Toro chases dreams, attempting (and often succeeding) in mixing horror and romanticism as he allows his ample imagination to invade reality. In his great 2006 movie, Pan's Labyrinth, del Toro produced a dark fantasy about Franco's Spain. Now in The Shape of Water, del Toro turns to American shores, for a fairy tale about the love between a mute woman (Sally Hawkins) and a creature who has been brought from the depths of the Amazon to the US by government officials who see him as a threat.

The second half of del Toro's conception -- the part involving an attempt by a government agent (Michael Shannon) to destroy the creature -- might be the weakest part of the movie, flirting with cliches about the way officialdom inevitably becomes the enemy of beauty and mystery.

But this creature is different. Called Amphibian Man in the credits (Doug Jones under a ton of make-up), the creature has the physique of a man but also has scales and the ability to be fierce when threatened. In the Amazon, natives thought Amphibian Man was a god. Rather than trying to trample his strangeness, they elevated it.

Perhaps never quite as poetic as its wonderful title, The Shape of Water nonetheless allows del Toro to give full vent to an imagination into which movies flow, cinematic tributaries that fuel his sense of invention. It's not coincidental that Hawkins' Elisa lives above a theater called the Orpheum where The Story of Ruth is playing or that her neighbor (a gay artist played by Richard Jenkins) obsessively watches old movies, preferring them to the news of the day.

Set in Baltimore during the 1960s, the movie alternates between two major locations: Elisa's apartment and her place of employment, a government installation where Amphibian man is being held prisoner.

Elisa and her co-worker (a down-to-earth Octavia Spencer) learn that the creature is being tormented by Shannon's character. An authoritarian jerk, Shannon's Strickland becomes the real monster, a self-justifying sadist disguised as a "normal" man. Shannon's Strickland lives in suburbia, indulges himself by buying a Cadillac and pounds away (literally) during sex with his mildly libidinous wife.

Michael Stuhlbarg makes an appearance as a scientist who wants to preserve the creature. He believes that it would be a crime to destroy Amphibian Man. Stuhlbarg's Bob has a double identity. It's not much of a spoiler to tell you that Bob is also a Russian spy and that the Russians have their eye on this creature. They, too, would like to harness its powers.

Hawkins excels in her performance as a silent woman who gradually reveals her strengths. From the beginning, del Toro establishes Elisa's affinity for water. For Elisa, water and sexuality are intimately connected. And, yes, Elisa not only has a romantic interest in the creature; she has sex with him. She explains to Spencer's curious Zelda how this union is possible in one of the movie's giggly joking moments.

Del Toro delivers on the promise of the title. There's a lot of water in The Shape of Water, arriving in the form of flooded rooms, downpours and the tank in which Amphibian Man languishes. Water is life and, as such, can't always be contained.

The movie's romanticism extends to its elements that in the 1960s might have been considered "subversive," a woman who can't speak, a gay man, and a black woman. It falls to these outsiders to appreciate Amphibian Man in all his scaly glory. It is only in union with Amphibian Man that Elisa finds her true identity. She's finally complete.

Those familiar with del Toro's work won't be surprised at the movie's visual mastery, greatly aided by the cinematography of Dan Lausten and the production design of Paul D. Austerberry; they help the movie live in a world all its own.

The Shape of Water doesn't quite reach the magical heights at which del Toro must have been aiming, but it stands as a work in which sweet and sour tones bump against one another with del Toro insisting that only in the full embrace of those we deem alien do we find our deepest humanity -- or maybe he's just telling a small story about a woman who deserves more than life has given her.

Either way, The Shape of Water brims with strange charm.

A house in need of repairs

Director Guillermo del Toro's Crimson Peak borders on the ludicrous.

I was hoping that Guillermo del Toro's Crimson Peak would rival the alluring weirdness of the director's 2006 Pan's Labyrinth, but this lavish Gothic romance/ghost story wastes a ton of production design and a capable cast on a story that (at its most dramatic points) had members of a preview audience chuckling.

As best as I can tell, chuckles aren't what del Toro had in mind for a movie that's striving to be eerie and chilling.

To make matters worse, Crimson Peak brims with the kinds of behavior found only in second-rate horror movies.

Consider: A young bride (Mia Wasikowska) arrives with her dashing husband (Tom Hiddleston) at his family estate in England. A staggeringly gloomy home looks as if it was lifted from an over-priced theme park.

Leaves and later snow drift through a large hole in the roof, but Wasikowska's Edith doesn't bother to ask whether Hiddleston's Sir Thomas Sharp has any repair plans in mind.

Did I mention that Edith, who aspires to be a novelist, is warned never to go below the house's first floor? Well, of course, she is.

To add color and perhaps symbolism, the Sharp home is built atop blood-red clay that seeps through some of the walls of Sharp's Allerdale estate.

Edith's arrival at the Sharp manse isn't exactly joyous. Jessica Chastain plays Lucille, Sharpe's sourpuss sister, a woman with an unnaturally possessive attitude toward her sibling. Lucille doesn't take kindly to her brother's new wife.

All of this takes place after Edith loses her father, who's ruthlessly murdered in the bathroom of his Buffalo, N.Y, club. The movie opens in the U.S. before moving to Sharp's isolated British wreck of a mansion.

Del Toro's depiction of Buffalo society in 1901 seems to have some potential. At minimum, it demonstrates what a movie looks like when some considerable part of the costumer's budget appears to have been spent on women's hats.

Edith's father (Jim Beaver) immediately mistrusts the aristocratic Sharp, who's trying to persuade him to invest in a machine that mines clay. A self-made industrialist, Beaver's Carter Cushing prides himself on being a good judge of character.

These early scenes -- sort of an extended prologue -- also introduce us to a doctor (Charlie Hunnam), an earnest fellow who cares about Edith, and who quite predictably will figure into the movie's over-the-top finale.

Del Toro lays on the funhouse effects (skeletal-looking creatures emerge from floors or soak in bathtubs), but the story evolves in ways that seldom surprise.

Perhaps del Toro was betting that audiences would delight in seeing these musty horror tropes exhumed and presented with unashamed blatancy, but -- in the clinches -- the resultant movie proves as silly as it is somber.

If Crimson Peak had been intended as a comedy, it might have worked, but del Toro seems to take the movie's swooning melodrama seriously.

Beyond all that, Crimson Peak's ghosts seem less like expressions of supernatural unrest than effects that seep into a movie like wandering strangers with no place else to go.

More monsters from the deep

Giant robots, ugly sea monsters and a robust comic-book spirit stave off disaster for Pacific Rim.

In what has been a largely disappointing summer -- at least in the blockbuster department -- director Guillermo del Toro's Pacific Rim comes as a refreshing surprise -- at least for a while. Taking his cue from classic Japanese horror movies such as Godzilla, del Toro imagines a time when hideous sea monsters called Kaiju are terrorizing the planet.

For reasons that aren't entirely clear, humanity has decided to battle these monstrous creatures with giant robots called Jaegers (German for hunters). It's also not clear why these 25-story tall behemoths need to be operated by two humans who work inside the machines and who must coordinate their movements through a symbiotic mind melding technique called "drifting." Wouldn't batteries have been just as good? Hasn't anyone heard of remotes?

If you haven't gotten the idea by now, let me make it clearer: Pacific Rim isn't about real-world logic; it's about putting a big-money charge into monster-movie tropes that once were considered indispensable components of second-tier entertainments.

Del Toro's movie is also about actors delivering uninspired dialogue with a straight face, about the wanton proliferation of special effects (some very good) and about a fair amount of well-conceived dystopian set design.

Put another way: The impressively scaled world del Toro creates is probably more interesting than what takes place in it: At its best, Pacific Rim brims with the kind of comic-book monumentalism that the lingering adolescent in me still finds impressive, epic-proportioned battles staged in a virtually created vastness.

I don't think del Toro, who has directed Hollywood movies such as Hellboy and more idiosyncratic fare such as Pan's Labyrinth, would object to anyone saying that he has tried to play with every toy he can find in hopes of creating a movie that will boom and bash its way through a couple of hours of clangorous action, semi-interesting exposition and unadulterated genre kicks.

I saw Pacific Rim in IMAX and 3-D, and the experience was overwhelming, particularly in the noise department. There's enough metal-on-metal clanging to stock a couple of Transformer movies. Moreover, some of the action seemed repetitive, particularly as seen in cinematographer Guillermo Navarro's darkly hued images.

You won't find much by way of stand-out acting here, but Pacific Rim is the kind of movie that can get by on performances that are servicable. British actor Charlie Hunnam portrays Raleigh Beckett, an ace figther who -- along with his brother (Diego Klattenhoff) -- has earned a reputation as a premier Kaiju killer.

But when Raleigh's brother dies (in the movie's gripping prologue), a dispirited Raleigh quits fighting and takes a job building walls to keep out the sea monsters. You needn't have seen a ton of movies to know that the commander of the Jaeger force (Idris Elba) will summon Raleigh back for one last battle against the rapidly proliferating Kaiju.

This task acquires increased urgency because the Kaiju invasion is about to intensify and because the Jaeger force, which thus far hasn't succeeded, is about to be disbanded.

When Raleigh rejoins the Jaeger fighters in Hong Kong, it's clear that he's going to need a new partner with whom he can "drift." Enter Mako Mori (Rinko Kikuchi of Babel), a serious fighter who wants to battle monsters. Elba's character doesn't want Mako to fight for reasons that are revealed during a preparatory drifting exericse.

The screenplay by Travis Beacham raises and drops issues at speeds that rival the movie's action set pieces. It's not the most elegantly conceived piece of work, although it makes room for a few complications about the Kaiju and for a couple of dueling scientists (Charlie Day and Burn Gorman) who provide comic relief.

There's also a cameo from Hellboy stalwart Ron Perlman, who plays a character with the strangely evocative name of Hannibal Chau, a Hong Kong criminal who lives in a Blade Runner-like portion of the city, where he sells the body parts of slain Kaijus.

I wish I could say that the movie -- entertaining for roughly three quarters of its length -- hadn't worn out for me, but the combination of noise and action eventually took its toll on both my ear drums and nervous system.

That's not to say that Pacific Rim isn't fully loaded for summer. Del Toro knows how to make a comic book movie, and -- even when the material lets him down -- he does his best to keep the movie's dark world spinning as furiously as possible.

The imaginative bloat of "Hellboy II"

Can there be-- as cliche insists -- too much of a good thing? I'm not sure, but I began to wonder during "Hellboy II: The Golden Army,'' a movie that seems afraid to let a minute pass without introducing one more impressive creature. In this edition, director Guillermo Del Toro's like a generous kid who wants to share every toy in his toy chest. I appreciated the cinematic largess, but wondered whether I was watching inspired creativity or B-movie bloat? Maybe "Hellboy II" offers a bit of both.

When "Pan's Labyrinth" played the Toronto International Film Festival, del Toro told me in an interview that he couldn't have made his eerie, brilliant anti-Fascist fantasy had he not done "Hellboy" first. Del Toro said he learned much from "Hellboy" that became useful to him as he worked on "Pan's Labyrinth."

Watching "Hellboy II: The Golden Army," it struck me that the obviously talented Del Toro, who'll be directing the upcoming "Hobbit" movies, had found himself a new laboratory. The sequel to 2004's "Hellboy" can be seen as an elaborate creature feature, a display of unleashed (and sometimes over-indulged) imagination built around a story that's not nearly as interesting as the movie's visual pyrotechnics.

Ron Perlman returns as the big-fisted, cigar-chomping Hellboy, and Selma Blair and Doug Jones reprise their roles as Liz Sherman and Abe Sapien. This time, Hellboy must stop Prince Nuada (Luke Goss), a brooding warrior who wants to awaken an army of golden soldiers so that he can destroy all mankind. The prince's sister (Anna Walton) doesn't share her brother's ambitions. She's sympathetic to humans.

Perlman's amusing gruffness, a few humorous scenes (Hellboy and Abe Sapien getting drunk on Tecate whle listening to Barry Manilow) and an ending that's morbidly loopy keep the movie from derailing. "Hellboy's" fans may not mind that del Toro's script feels scattered, but I was slightly disappointed by a movie that -- for all its amazing monsters -- seems to lack the gripping intensity of some of del Toro's previous work.

RECOMMENDED READING:
If you want to know how the "Hellboy" series has grown, take a loot at this article from Variety.. Writer David S. Cohen, who interviewed del Toro, begins by noting that this edition of the "Hellboy" series features 32 monsters as compared to five in the original.