Movie review : victor Frankenstein 1994

Victor Frankenstein: movie review 

This is a part of my classroom activity of Victor Frankenstein: movie screening.

  

•    Directed by - Kenneth  Branagh 
• Screenplay by -  Steph Lady,  Frank Darabont 
• Based on - Frankenstein by Mary Shelley 
• Produced by - Francis Ford Coppola,  James v. Hart, John Veitch 
• Starring - Robert De Niro 
•               - Kenneth Branagh 
•               Tom Hulce 
•            Helena Bonham Carter 
• Cinematography - Roger Pratt 
• Music by - Patrik Doyle 
• Release date - November 3, 1994 ( London Film Festival ) 

Frankenstein movie is directed by Kenneth Branagh. The movie got released in 1994. The movie is based on the novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. Frankenstein" is an underrated version of the classic story. Directed by Kenneth Branagh, the dramatic story was not well accepted by professional critics and by many viewers.

In 1794, in the Arctic Sea, Captain Robert Walton (Aidan Quinn) is a man obsessed to reach the North Pole, pushing his crew to exhaustion. When his ship hits an iceberg, she is stranded in the ice. Out of the blue, Captain Walton and his men overhear a dreadful cry and they see a stranger coming to the ship. He introduces himself as Victor Frankenstein (Kenneth Branagh) and he tells to the captain the story of his life since he was a little boy in Geneva. 

Victor is a brilliant student and in love with his stepsister Elizabeth (Helena Bonham Carter), an orphan that was raised by his father Baron Frankenstein (Ian Holm). In 1793, Victor moves to Ingolstadt to join the university and he promises to get married to Elizabeth. In school, Victor befriends Henry Clerval (Tom Hulce) that becomes his best friend. Victor gets close to Professor Waldman (John Cleese) and decides to create life to cheat death, but Waldman advises him that he should not try this experiment since the result would be an abomination. When Waldman dies, Victor steals his notes and tries to create life. He succeeds and gives life to a strong Creature (Robert De Niro), composed of parts of deceased persons. However, he realizes that his experiment is a mistake and he abandons The Creature expecting that it could die alone. however The Creature survives and learns how to read and write, but he is a monster rejected by society and by his own creator. The Creature decides to revenge on Victor killing everyone that he loves. 

                  

Victor, who believes the creature to be dead from the cholera epidemic, returns to Geneva to marry Elizabeth. He finds his younger brother William has been murdered Justine, a servant of the Frankenstein household, is inadvertently framed for the crime by the creature and hanged by a lynch mob before her trial. 

The creature abducts Victor and demands that he make a companion for him, promising to leave his creator in peace in return. Victor begins gathering the tools he used to create life, but when the creature insists that he use Justine's body to make the companion, Victor breaks his promise and the creature exacts his revenge, strangling Victor's father and tearing out Elizabeth's heart. Victor and the creature fight for Elizabeth's affections, but Elizabeth, horrified by what she has become, commits suicide by setting herself on fire. Both Victor and the creature escape as the mansion burns down. 

The story returns to the Arctic. Victor tells Walton that he has been pursuing his creation for months to kill him. Soon after relating his story, Victor dies from pneumonia. Walton discovers the creature weeping over Victor's body, confessing that for all of his hatred, he still considers Victor to be his "father." The crew prepares a funeral pyre, but the ceremony is interrupted when the ice around the ship cracks. Walton invites the creature to stay with the ship, but the creature insists on remaining with the pyre. He takes the torch and burns himself alive with Victor's body. Walton, having seen the consequences of Victor's obsession, orders the ship to return home. 

The monster has always been the true subject of the Frankenstein story, and Kenneth Branagh's new retelling understands that. "Mary Shelley's Frankenstein" has all of the usual props of the Frankenstein films, brought to a fever pitch: The dark and stormy nights, the lightning bolts, the charnel houses of spare body parts, the laboratory where Victor Frankenstein stirs his steaming cauldron of life. But the centre of the film, quieter and more thoughtful, contains the real story.

And he is thoughtful: "Yes, I speak, and read, and think, and know the ways of man," he says, with an echo of Caliban. And he asks, "What of my soul? Do I have one? What if these people of which I am composed?" The whole issue of the Branagh film is concentrated here: Has Frankenstein created a monster or a man? De Niro brings real pathos to the role, and there is agony when he asks the scientist, "Did you ever consider the consequences of your actions?" And his loneliness is palpable: "For the sympathy of one living being I would make peace with all." But the film surrounding these scenes is less satisfactory. The movie is bracketed with an unnecessary prologue and epilogue, taken from the original novel, during which an Arctic expedition encounters FrankensteinThe Creature is on target, but the rest of the film is so frantic, so manic, it doesn't pause to be sure its effects are registered. and his monster wandering far from home on the frozen wastes.

   Thank you