Chronicle reporter Will Blakley discusses his review of Guillermo del Toro’s “Frankenstein.”

Transcript:

0:08: Welcome back to the Chronicle Chronversations. 

0:10: I’m your host, Aaron Guzman. 

0:12: This week on Chronversations, student journalist Will Blakley talks about his recent review on the newly released “Frankenstein” film directed by Guillermo del Toro. 

0:21: How are you doing, Will? 

0:22: I’m alive, man, you know, week 11 of the semester, just like trying to get through it. 

0:26: And this new “Frankenstein” film by director Guillermo del Toro, what are your general opening thoughts on that? What do you think about it? 

0:34: It’s good, not great in my opinion, 

0:38: Ok.

0:39: I think that it is del Toro’s best looking movie. It is absolutely beautiful, it is breathtaking. 0:48: But I find it to feel emptier than his usual films. 

0:50: What kind of messages or plot does it follow throughout the film? 

0:53: Is it, like, just a straight-out-of-the-book or is it just kind of, like, its own take on “Frankenstein”? 

1:00: That’s what’s interesting about it. 

1:01: It’s, um, it tries to walk the line between being the most accurate adaptation of the book we’ve seen thus far in, like, film, but also del Toro makes changes for it to try and be its own thing, which is where I think the balance is not struck. 

1:18: I think that the whole film feels like it’s battling between del Toro‘s own sense of iconography, his own sense of themes versus Mary Shelley‘s novel which has its own themes, has its own iconography, and they’re just not quite meshing in my opinion. 

1:32: There’s definitely a strong theme there about fatherhood, about generational abuse and trauma, about, you know, kindness and love, which I think is what many del Toro films are about. 

1:41: I think his last film, “Pinocchio”, actually, I think that film has a very similar kind of structure weirdly to “Frankenstein” and very similar themes, and I actually think “Pinocchio” explores them in a stronger way where this feels a bit like a retread and one that doesn’t quite strike a chord with me as much as his prior film did. 

2:01: Would you say that this is a faithful adaptation to the novel? 

2:05: That’s the battle I think del Toro’s fighting. 

2:07: I would say overall it is a faithful adaptation, but it does take a couple big swings that changes, I think the overall idea of Shelly’s novel. 

2:16: Shelly‘s novel, I think you can tell, is written by a woman from a female perspective, right? 

2:21: It feels very angry, yet still sympathetic. It feels like someone who is talking about the social horrors of the world from the perspective of a woman at that time where I think del Toro‘s “Frankenstein” is him trying to apply his own messaging to it, which is more about, you know, to, to an extent capitalism, to an extent, warfare, and connecting that to the idea of abuse and fatherhood. 

2:44: I think that it almost works, but in certain sections, the film is so faithful to Shelley‘s novel it feels like wires are being crossed, but to answer your question more specifically, do I think they exist as two separate entities? 

2:57: Yeah. I, I think del Toro does enough of his own thing to make it its own thing, but I do think it would have been stronger if he took even bigger swings to make it more of his own personal story. 

3:08: What would you score this if you were to give it a percentage score out of 10 out of 5? 

3:14: So I, I would say a 7 out of 10 just because it overall works. 

3:18: It is a successful movie. 

3:20: It’s hard to make any movie and the fact that anyone can make a movie that is beautiful and cohesive as this and is able to take Mary Shelly’s classic tale and make it to some extent their own thing. 

3:30: Is it a marvel? 

3:31: It’s, it’s amazing, but I just don’t think emotionally for me, it quite hit the right heartstrings for me to, like, go above and beyond and say like, oh, I would watch this again and again, which like I think that’s kind of what separates a 7 and an 8 for me. 

3:45: It’s like 7. 

3:46: I watched it once, once was good. 

3:48: That’s all for this week. 

3:49: Make sure to stay up to date with our campus and metro news and be sure to subscribe to our newsletter on columbiachronicle.com. 

3:56: I’m Aaron Guzman. 

3:57: Thanks for listening. 

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