‘Like Jesus to me’: what Frankenstein means to Guillermo del Toro

On the first day of shooting Frankenstein, Mexican-born filmmaker Guillermo del Toro held up a drawing of the creature he had made when he was a teenager. “He said, ‘This is like Jesus to me,’” recalls Oscar Isaac, who plays Victor Frankenstein. For del Toro, Mary Shelley’s 1818 gothic novel and the 1931 film starring Boris Karloff are his personal surtexts, the origin of a lifelong affection for the monsters he has breathed into life throughout his career ever since. For a misunderstood kid growing up in a devout Catholic family, Frankenstein’s creature, unloved by his maker but graced by Karloff with empathy and fragility, cracked something open. “I felt I was being born into a world that was unforgiving, where you either have to be a little white lamb or you were doomed,” del Toro says. “The moment Karloff crosses the threshold in the movie, backwards, and then turns, I was like St Paul on the road to Damascus. I said: ‘That’s me.’ It was just an immediate and absolute soul transference. And I think that’s never gone. “It was forgiveness for being imperfect,” he adds. Frankenstein, which will have a limited release in US cinemas on October 17, and will air on Netflix’s streaming service from November 7, may be the culmination of del Toro’s artistic life. It is his chance to finally unleash a film – a grand saga of creator and creation, father and son, God and sinner – that he has been dreaming of for decades. “It’s the movie that I’ve been in training for 30 years to do,” he said in a recent interview from Toronto, where he was mixing the film. Del Toro first saw the 1931 film when he was seven. He read Shelley’s book at 11. Ever since, monsters have been less a narrative device to him than an abiding personal belief system. As long as 20 years ago, he was talking about his hopes of making a “Miltonic” adaptation of Shelley’s novel. As a child, he identified with the creature. After becoming a parent, he understood Dr Frankenstein in a new way. “It’s one of those books that changes with you,” he says. “So the movie changed. You feel like you’ve been dreaming about it for so long.” Isaac initially met with del Toro with no project in mind. Their talk turned towards their fathers. “By the end of that conversation, he said, ‘I want you to be my Victor,’” Isaac says. “I didn’t really know he was doing Frankenstein. Then he gave me Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and [classic Chinese text] the Tao Te Ching and said, ‘Read these two things.’” Isaac, 46, had long known del Toro, but it was their first film together. For the actor, the collaborative experience reminded him of his breakthrough role with the Coen brothers. “It felt like doing Inside Llewyn Davis again. And I haven’t had that since,” Isaac says. “It’s the kind of feeling of a family all building this thing together in an incredibly communal way.” Netflix, along with producers J Miles Dale and Scott Stuber, is betting Frankenstein will be one of autumn’s top films. It premiered at the Venice Film Festival and will show at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 8. Del Toro’s last film, Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio, won the streamer its first best animated film Oscar. In 2018, del Toro’s The Shape of Water won best picture. Frankenstein is all but sure to be in the Academy Awards mix this autumn. There have been more than a hundred Frankenstein films over the years, yet it has also been a long time (Tim Burton’s Frankenweenie in 2012?) since one really grabbed audiences. For del Toro, what makes his Frankenstein unique might be the depth of feeling he has for it. “I believe you can cover ‘With a Little Help From My Friends’ and be Joe Cocker or not. But the only thing you have is your voice,” says del Toro. “It’s very Catholic because it’s coming from me. I’m interested in answering: why did God have to send Jesus to be crucified?” Del Toro’s Frankenstein was also made with particular fidelity to Shelley, and seeks to avoid some of the more simplistic characterisations that have been seen over the years. The conception of Victor Frankenstein was less mad scientist, more artist and showman. Isaac even took inspiration from an R&B icon. “For one scene, when Victor goes into the tower for the first time, imagining his lab, I even watched a rehearsal of Prince coming to the Super Bowl and the way he looked around the stage, that kind of ownership,” says Isaac. Del Toro, 60, sees himself in both Frankenstein and his monster, and wanted a film that reflects the perspectives of both. “Since Nightmare Alley, I tend to think of the protagonist and the antagonist as sometimes the same character,” he says. “That, I guess, happens after turning 50. You start to see the world as a paradox, as opposed to a dichotomy.” It is tempting to see del Toro himself as a kind of Victor Frankenstein. He is a maker of monsters, a conjuror of fantastical things. But despite having contemplated his Frankenstein project for many years, he did not want to make a preordained film, electrified into life by his genius. He wanted to more gently shepherd it into being. “Contrary to the doctor, I’ve learned to listen. When you’re a young filmmaker, you talk about the movie you see. What you learn with decades of experience is that the movie is talking. And it tells you what it needs to be. “People ask what comes with age as a director. I say, you understand that making films is not a dictation. It’s not a hostage negotiation with reality.”

‘Like Jesus to me’: what Frankenstein means to Guillermo del Toro

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}‘It’s the movie that I’ve been in training for 30 years to do,’ says del Toro of his new film starring Oscar Isaac as Victor Frankenstein

‘It’s the movie that I’ve been in training for 30 years to do,’ says del Toro of his new film starring Oscar Isaac as Victor Frankenstein