My Life Closed Twice Before Its Close

Cool and atmospheric, this film was co-produced by Francis Ford Coppola only two years after he directed Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Striking while the iron was hot, he signed up Kenneth Branagh to direct and star as the slightly mad Dr. Frankenstein. For whatever reason, it was not very well received and subsequently made few waves at the box office in 1994. Still, it is a fine movie, with quality performances and a script truer to the novel than any other film version.

Branagh does a good job as Frankenstein, the medical doctor who becomes obsessed with raising the dead. His performance is at times wonderful and other times overdone. He seems to try and convey more emotion than the character needs at certain times. The wonderful work he’s done previously in his Shakespeare movies is supplanted into a character that has little more base than being a mad doctor. He tries to play it like Victor Frankenstein is Macbeth, and it does work, but only now and then.

The supporting roles are the binding ties of the film. DeNiro’s monster, while not quite on the level of Karloff, is an interesting amalgam of previous screen versions and the novel’s description. The outcome is one that works, but makes you wonder why it isn’t scarier. He looks gruesome, he kills children, why is he the one you tend to sympathize with? The script, co-written by none other than Frank Darabont, future director of The Shawshank Redemption, gives the monster a good progression from mute killer to bitter, vengeful, athletic killer…(ok, not much of a progression, besides learning how to speak). But while Branagh’s Victor is confusing in his flip-flopping portrayal of joyfulness and misery, DeNiro does everything he can with a part no one could have much seen him playing in the first place, and manages to stay consistent.

Helena Bonham Carter, Tom Hulce, Ian Holm, and John Cleese do fine dramatic turns to aid in the Branagh/DeNiro acting battle royal that occupies most of the films energy. Carter especially fares well, in a role that isn’t given much time on screen to evolve. It doesn’t hurt that she’s barely ever made a non-period film and is more comfortable chewing the scenery than most actresses wearing corsets.

The main reasons for this film’s failure are the inevitable comparisons to Coppola’s Dracula, which was more lavish, artsy, and colorful. Branagh tries hard to maintain realism in this very unreal story, and succeeds by using excellent scenic design and costume work, in addition to an impressive lack of self-indulgence, except when he has a tendency to run around in the near-buff while 'creating.' While I liked Dracula equally as well, it was a bit cartoonish in its extreme violence and bizarrely frentic cinematography. Frankenstein is a horror film that is evenly old fashioned and new wave that’s serious contradiction is that it isn’t very scary. Don’t watch expecting a creeky, Karloff-style monster and fog-shrouded sets, but if you want to be true to Shelly’s vision, this is the one to see.