Like so many before me, and so many who will no doubt follow after, I spent most of my youth (and my teenage years in particular) depressed.
For me it was this slow, quiet, all-consuming sense of despair. A sadness that I couldn't shake, even on the best and happiest days of my life.
Knowing that it wouldn’t matter. That it wouldn’t last.
I knew in my heart, in my soul, that I wouldn't live to see the future. It was a vague, nebulous concept: something that only existed in theory, for other people.
Over the years, I learned to carry the weight of it better. Eventually, I found a strength not everyone does, and I forged that despair into anger. Rage against a world that had failed me time and again.
One day, after years and years of this, the metaphorical clouds parted. At last, I could see the sun without straining for it.
It was a slow realization, a cool autumn breeze passing by, and somehow—over a stretch of time that suddenly seemed limitless and infinite—I realized that I wanted to live.
And at the same time, I realized that I didn't know how.
Suddenly, the world was unfamiliar. Beautiful and new and terrifying. It had moved on without me and left me behind, and all I could do was try and fail to catch up.
I came to understand, eventually, that it still wasn't made for someone like me.
I say all of this to explain, in a way that I hope is easily understandable, why Guillermo del Toro's take on Frankenstein resonates so strongly with me.
If pressed, I might describe it as a meditation on life, death, and what it means to be a person.
As told here, del Toro's vision is a story in three parts: the origin of Victor Frankenstein and that of the Creature, each from their own perspectives, and the story that unfolds between them at last.
The framing device sees Victor Frankenstein rescued from near-death by a ship's captain as the crew fends off a monster, telling the story of how he came to be in this frozen wasteland in the first place.
Victor Frankenstein, as portrayed by Oscar Isaac (and Christian Convery for his childhood counterpart), is an outcast who feels close to his mother due to their shared disposition (before her tragic death) and estranged from his father, who is interested in him less as a son and more as a project; something to be molded into his father's vision for him.
The loss of his mother sparks a lifelong obsession with the concept of conquering death, which leads to the creation of the Creature—who remains technically nameless for the duration of the film.
(The prevailing wisdom, as far as I can understand discussions of the novel, is that his name should likely be Adam. For me, the conclusion of this film seems to indicate something else.)
From his early innocence and curiosity to the way the world twists him into something wicked and dangerous, molding him into a monster by refusing to consider that he may be anything else, the Creature is perfectly portrayed by Jacob Elordi.
Given his tendency to sympathize with perceived monsters, Frankenstein is perhaps the single most perfect fit for del Toro's style of storytelling.
In the end, his approach takes a sympathetic view of man and monster. There are shades of both to be found in each, and he emphasizes this fact at every opportunity.
Victor is single-minded to the point of obsession, seeming not to care for the people around him or the life he creates, oblivious or uncaring of the discomfort and fear that precedes him—yet he was once a child himself, and he has remained painfully human throughout his life.
Meanwhile, the Creature kills indiscriminately in the course of his hunt for Victor, allowing himself to become a monster after failing to be considered as anything else. Despite that, it would seem apparent that the most important thing he has been is a friend; bonding first with Victor's future sister in law, Elizabeth, and later with an elderly farmer.
The moment that will, I think, haunt me for the rest of my life comes as the film approaches its end: not a confrontation between man and monster, but reconciliation between father and son.
The Creature has seemingly achieved true immortality, overcoming death as Victor intended, and as such he has been cursed with the inability to ever truly find peace. He may never be laid to rest.
What, then, is someone who can never really die meant to do?
"While you are alive, what recourse do you have but to live?"
I still feel out of step with the world, like it somehow passed me by while I was sleeping. I still don't know what it will take before I can truly feel like myself.
In the end, I am alive.
What recourse do I have but to live?
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