‘He never gave me a name.…’
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is one of the most adapted novels ever written, and yet, most of those adaptations bear only a passing resemblance to the source material. Following the success of Francis Ford Coppola’s take on Bram Stoker’s Dracula in 1992, the director acquired the rights for Frankenstein and secured Robert De Niro to play the monster – a piece of casting that could only come from the man who would go on to gift the world Megalopolis. De Niro chose Kenneth Branagh to direct, while Frank Darabont came onboard to rewrite Steph Lady’s screenplay. You might think that surely all of that talent couldn’t possibly fail. Think again…
Branagh himself appears as Victor Frankenstein, Helena Bonham Carter plays the doomed Elizabeth, with a starry supporting cast rounded out by John Cleese, Ian Holm and Tom Hulce. The plot stays close to Shelley’s novel with a few key differences.
I think the best way to sum up Branagh’s take on the Frankenstein myth is to acknowledge that it makes Coppola’s version of Dracula seem staid and subtle (and anyone who has witnessed Keanu Reeves’ performance in that film will understand the severity of the comparison). Everything here is way too big. The performances. The score. The make up. It feels like every line of dialogue is delivered at least two octaves above what it should be. De Niro came out of this film the worst at the time, but it is actually Branagh who kills this movie – both as an actor and as a director. His Victor Frankenstein is so utterly misguided that its impossible for anyone else to try and salvage something from this complete turkey of a movie. The kindest thing I could say for it is that it makes for a very entertaining comedy in a completely unintentional way.
In a way, Branagh does capture the essence of Victor Frankenstein here. He has created something truly terrible that he can’t control. I’ll leave Darabont to offer the most accurate summation of this monstrosity – ‘Shelley’s book is not operatic, it whispers at you a lot. The movie was a bad one’. Quite.
