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Netflix

At the Venice Film Festival Guillermo del Toro premiered his latest film Frankenstein adapted from the classic early 19th century novel by Mary Shelley. One published review of the feature criticizes it for presenting Frankenstein’s creation as too sympathetic leaving Victor Frankenstein (Oscar Isaac) as the real villain of the work. There has been quite a bit of pushback from various sections online to this interpretation by the critic declaring loudly and in no uncertain terms that this is in fact the theme of Shelley’s novel.

Now, anyone who has seen much of del Toro’s fantastic work should be far from surprised that in any ‘monster’ movie that his sympathies lie with the monsters. This has been del Toro’s theme in most of his films including his Oscar-winning The Shape of Water. It is who the man and who the artist is.

I would wager dollars to donuts that in this adaptation of the novel some things are going to be changed to keep the sympathy with the creature and one of those elements is the murder of William, Victor Frankenstein’s younger brother, The creature then frames the family’s nurse, Justine, for killing William, leading to her lynching at the hands of an outraged mob.

In the film Doctor Sleep, the character of Rose the Hat, played to terrifying perfection by Rebecca Ferguson, tortures and murders a young boy to enhance the psychic energies she and her ‘family’ require. No one held Rose in any sympathy nor should they even though her motivations, survival, are more excusable than the creature’s, which were simply anger and vengeance. The audience, if forced to witness a child’s murder, on screen, will abandon all sympathy for the creature and his emotional trauma at being abandoned. If this event is in this adaptation, then it will take place suitably offscreen and as such will not really be real in the emotional context of the audience.

Here is where I tend to part ways with many people’s interpretation and sympathy for Frankenstein’s creation. Yes, being abandoned as essentially a child by his creator, his father, is a terrible thing to endure. Being shunned for one’s physical appearance is something that creates deep and terrible emotional scars. For that there are countless people already deserving of our sympathy because they have not turned that pain into murderous rage.

Some do.

Some people feel so isolated, hurt, tormented, and rejected by the people and society around them that they become vessels of pure, unrestrained rage. Sadly, it is not uncommon for these hurt and tormented souls to murder by the score. Like the creature they feel ‘justified’ in their acts of violence against those that they have rightly or wrongly concluded are the cause of their misery.

Tremendous emotional injury and hurt are never an excuse for wanton murder and violence, not in the real world and not in fiction. I can have no sympathy for the creature because it is intelligent enough and self-aware enough to know not only what it does but why it does it and yet it still chooses to murder.