A blog formerly known as Bookishness / By Charles Matthews

"Dazzled by so many and such marvelous inventions, the people of Macondo ... became indignant over the living images that the prosperous merchant Bruno Crespi projected in the theater with the lion-head ticket windows, for a character who had died and was buried in one film and for whose misfortune tears had been shed would reappear alive and transformed into an Arab in the next one. The audience, who had paid two cents apiece to share the difficulties of the actors, would not tolerate that outlandish fraud and they broke up the seats. The mayor, at the urging of Bruno Crespi, explained in a proclamation that the cinema was a machine of illusions that did not merit the emotional outbursts of the audience. With that discouraging explanation many ... decided not to return to the movies, considering that they already had too many troubles of their own to weep over the acted-out misfortunes of imaginary beings."
--Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

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Tuesday, November 11, 2025

Frankenstein (Guillermo del Toro, 2025)

Oscar Isaac in Frankenstein

Cast: Oscar Isaac, Jacob Elordi, Christoph Waltz, Mia Goth, Felix Kammerer, Charles Dance, David Bradley, Lars Mikkelsen, Christian Convery. Screenplay: Guillermo del Toro, based on a novel by Mary Shelley. Cinematography: Dan Laustsen. Production design: Tamara Deverell. Film editing: Evan Schiff. Music: Alexandre Desplat. 

Handsomely designed and filmed, compellingly acted, Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein strives to bridge the gap between literature, Mary Shelley's gothic novel, and film. Del Toro's version has some plot elements that don't quite work: How, for example, does a blind man teach someone to read? His major mistake, though, was giving the Creature superhuman strength and invulnerability; they turn him into a comic book superhero instead of the suffering being that Jacob Elordi's fine performance manifests. Oscar Isaac is one of our finest actors, but he seems to me a little too old for the role: Victor's obsession is a manifestation of youth, when all things seem possible. When Frankenstein fails, it's because the questions it raises, like what it means to be human, are too large for the medium that's trying to deal with them: They get lost in the cinematic spectacle.

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