Interviews by Elisa Leonelli
Frankenstein by Guillermo Del Toro, presented at the Venice Film Festival, held its glitzy Hollywood premiere at the Academy Museum on Motion Pictures October 6. In cinemas October 22, on Netflix November 7
Elisa Leonelli was invited for Best Movie, interviewed Guillermo Del Toro (writer-director) and the actors: Oscar Isaac (Victor Frankenstein), Jacob Elordi (the Creature), Mia Goth (Elizabeth).
What intrigued you about reinterpreting on film the myth of Frankenstein, created in the 1818 Gothic science fiction novel by Mary Shelly Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus?
Del Toro: I discovered the 1931 film masterpiece Frankenstein by James Whale with Boris Karloff as the Creature when I was seven, and it had a profound religious effect on me. I was raised Catholic, but there I found my true religion, I understood with Karloff what a martyr and a messiah meant, that’s when that Catholic imagery made sense. I thought, “This is a supernatural thing, and that’s me. That is who I am. That’s why I don’t fit in.” Then I read the book at age 11, and I realized the movie was not the book at all (it was based on the 1927 play by Peggy Webling Frankenstein: An Adventure in the Macabre) and that there was a lot more to tackle from the book. The humanity of the Creature, the inhumanity of the world. The romantics believed that their enemy was life, and the sentiment echoed in me. There are elements of Frankenstein in Cronos (1992) and in The Shape of Water (2017).
What did you learn about Mary Shelley’s life and work while writing the script for your version of Frankenstein?
Del Toro: I got to confess that I dedicated my life, decades of study and absorption, to Gothic literature and to the romantic movement: Mary Shelley, Percy Shelley, Lord Byron. I am quite a Gothic romance freak. So my movie is an amalgam of her biography, my biography, the romantic movement, historically, and the novel. What people of today don’t realize about these romantic poets is that they were iconoclasts. I mean, in 1814 Mary at age 16 woke up at five a.m. and escaped into the night with her married lover Percy Shelly, 22, without permission from her parents, to cross the English channel. She was caught by her stepmother who tried to send her back, failing to do so, she was prosecuted by the authorities, later getting pregnant and having a miscarriage.
Mia Goth as Elizabeth in Frankenstein © Netflix
Was Mary Shelley an inspiration for your version of Elizabeth, the fiancé of Victor Frankenstein’s younger brother William?
Del Toro: Yes, for me Elizabeth became an amalgam of me and Mary Shelley. I was writing already, and I had written a long treatment defining her actions, but not her role. The first time I met Mia Goth, she had just had her baby (daughter Isabel, born March 2022, with husband Shia LaBeouf), and she was talking about the baby with great love, passion and dedication. And I thought, that’s Elizabeth, she is the most intelligent character in the movie, she understands more than anybody else, she brings in a very strong energy of understanding the other, which is what the movie really is about. I mean, I have news for you, the other is you, every time you debase the other, you debase you, you lose. And that’s why Victor and the Creature exist in the mirror, that’s why the movie starts where it ends, and only the Creature breaks the circle at the end. All this for me was articulated theoretically, but Elizabeth articulates it dramatically when she talks about love. She says that the nature of love is to be found and to be lost. Everything she says has wisdom. So for me, Mary Shelley is fused in there, inside Elizabeth.
Mia, what aspects of you own life and personality did you tap into in order to play Elizabeth?
Mia Goth: Guillermo sent me the script maybe a couple of months after our initial meeting, I read it, and I was incredibly moved by it. I did recognize myself in Elizabeth. What really resonated with me was this sense of feeling like an outsider, this longing to connect and this searching for a home. As actors you try and find the character within you, and you hope that it’ll resonate with people.
Guillermo del Toro, Oscar Issac as Victor Frankenstein (c) Netflix
The look of your Creature is very different from the way it was portrayed by Boris Karloff in Frankenstein, a Black and White movie, or by Christopher Lee in The Curse of Frankenstein, 1957, shot in color. How did you conceive it?
Del Toro: That look was designed by Mike Hill, a makeup effects creator. Mike and I have been friends, and I’also his client. Over the years, I bought many sculptures Mike has done of the Creature from Frankenstein, like Boris Karloff. They’re all in my house, a have an entire room devoted to Frankenstein. And we became collaborators on The Shape of Water. Mike created a creature that is not a monster, but a character. And when you meet somebody with that kind of talent, then it’s a triangulation, it’s Jacob and myself and Mike. Victor is working with a bunch of mutilated corpses from a battlefield of the Crimean War, his monster is basically a resurrected soldier out of a mass grave, and that explains why he’s putting it together like a jigsaw puzzle. But what we want is to try to avoid the usual appearance like a car accident victim that came out all patched up, a bunch of parts put together. We designed the body almost in the way you would design a beautiful alabaster sculpture of a saint flayed out of the skin, like St. Bartholomew. We researched anatomy, and the idea was that this is not a repaired creature, this is a minted, new soul. So when you see it, it’s almost like a giant pale baby. I know this sounds very cruel, but that’s what happens in families, you’re born perfect, and then all the family comes in, they damage you and you crack. The Creature needs to feel like a baby, then like a philosopher, then like a man. The growth of the Creature is one of the salient things that Mary Shelley did in the book and that this movie does. We track the growth of the Creature into a man. I wanted to show that journey from a newly minted soul to a thinking human, when at the end the liberation of a ship is his first act of free will.
Jacob Elordi as the Creature in Frankenstein © Netflix
Jacob, what did you draw upon to play this innocent childlike creature, that experiences grief when his father/creator tries to destroy him?
Jacob Elordi: I have my own theory, that all of that suffering and pain and trauma is already in our system, as if I’d already lived the grief of losing my mother, even though she’s still alive. So in a way, the film was cathartic, because I got to look at it in the face, experience it, and address it. And then the film ends with a ray of hope, I got to look at the sun, and understand what recourse do I have but to live.
What preparation did you do to play a monster created in the lab, who is trying to figure out how to be a human being?
Jacob Elordi: When I first read the script, I had a lot of ideas about what it means to be constructed of parts, to have a calf from somebody else, a part of your brain from here, a part of your face from someone else, and how the communication would work between your brain to the muscles. But what was really instrumental was that Guillermo had a great idea to have me study Butoh, which is this Japanese dance of death about the reanimation of a corpse. It wasn’t so specific, but it was a helpful way to get inside my body, then I just spent an agonizing amount of time in front of the mirror, which was just like what I do my regular day (jokes). I read a baby development book, and I watched the children around me in my life, I stood outside a primary school, which was bizarre. And I watched my dog a lot. She a Golden Retriever and has this great innocence in the way that she moves and she looks at things.
Oscar Isaac as Victor Frankenstein (c) Netflix
As for Victor Frankenstein in his look and behavior you portray him more like an artist than a scientist. Did you base Oscar Isaac on someone in particular?
Del Toro: Victor has been dreaming about that creation for decades, so you know that he’s an aesthetically aware person. What was incredibly powerful about Oscar is that he is naturally musical, and I don’t want to say that Latin men dance better, but we do (Guillermo was born in Mexico, Oscar in Guatemala). I wanted Victor to seduce the whole school, to seduce the investors, to compel Elizabeth until he shows his flaws. He had be this magnetic poet, like Lord Byron, almost a Paganini figure that can move like a rock star like Mick Jagger and can think like a sculptor.
How did you get into the mindset of this tormented character, Victor Frankenstein?
Oscar Isaac: For me, it’s funny because I had so much pleasure playing this character. I even asked Guillermo, “Is it weird I’m finding it so fun and joyful to do this, even though it’s so dark and cruel?” And he said something really interesting, “Maybe it’s because you’re playing somebody that has no doubts.” So for somebody like me, who’s filled with whys and doubts all the time, to have the release of playing somebody that’s doubtless about what they want to do to the point of blindness is what I found so enjoyable.
Del Toro: Every tyrant in the history of mankind has no doubt, at least publicly, and thinks himself a victim. That’s a constant. They say, “Poor me, poor me.” And they’re monsters, destroying everybody’s life.. Victor is like Stan is in Nightmare Alley (2021) in many ways.
Oscar Isaac as Victor in Frankenstein © Netflix
What caused Frankenstein to be so cruel to his creation?
Oscar Isaac: Victor explains his reasons, he had a mean dad, but the truth is that the cruelty that he showed to his creation was unmatched, and he just didn’t see it at all. There’s this blindness, no recognition of the creature as his son, separate from him, and the fact that you could also interpret it as his own inner child that he brought back to life.
How do you interpret the final scene when Victor finally realized the damage he has done to his son?
Oscar Isaac: What I found incredibly moving, is that the Creature had to chase his father down, break down the doors to say, “I forgive you,” releasing him from this curse that was destined to keep going and going. I love the fact that there was grace in the Creature, even for someone that had been so cruel to him. You know, we had code name for this film while we were working on it, Prodigal Father. The father’s the one that goes away and has to come back and basically say he’s sorry.
Oscar Isaac as Victor Frankenstein (c) Netflix
There was a similar theme of a father creating a son in Pinocchio, the animated feature you directed in 2022 from the 1883 Italian classic by Carlo Collodi The Adventures of Pinocchio. Do you see that reflected in your family life, as a son, and now a father (Del Toro has two daughters, Marisa and Mariana, with his first wife Lorenza 1986-2017)?
Del Toro: Yes, in Latin culture, the father is a very looming figure. My dad (Federico) was really funny, he made people laugh with his jokes, but he was very severe about work ethic, he taught me discipline. I think we all are the book that our parents write, the metaphor of our parents. I have the poetry of my mother (Guadalupe), the funny character of my dad. We carry on where they couldn’t go or they didn’t want to go. My children are fearless in ways that I was afraid, and they’re afraid in ways that I’m fearless. I believe through your work, you honor your family. I ended up making Pinocchio and Frankenstein basically back-to-back at a time when I lost my father (in 2018) and I lost my mother (in 2022), and I really had to wonder about who I am because you become nobody’s child. The fact that that happened made both movie deeper.
What do you hope that audiences will learn from your Frankenstein?
Del Toro: You have to be careful with poetry, because if you give it a single meaning, it becomes math, it becomes chemistry. And I think symbols are alchemic, they depend on who is reading and they can mean many things. So I would be very hesitant to say it means only one thing. To me, what the movie tries to speak about is humanity, I believe forgiveness and acceptance, which are very scarce right now, make us human. And my fear is that at the end of whatever we’re going through, whoever is left standing, it doesn’t matter what it looks like, I just hope they are human.
Italian version as published on Best Movie website