There has never been a fully faithful adaptation of the bookFrankenstein.
Yet one cinematic offering, at least, made a serious attempt at doing the book justice.
And to be sure,Mary Shelleys Frankensteinwas a ragingKenneth Branaghspectacle when it came out 30 years ago today.
ThinkThe Age of Innocence(1993) andLittle Women(1994).
And in principle, BranaghsFrankensteinhews closer to its source material than Coppolas vampire bacchanal ever did.
However, little else from the novel ever makes it to the screen.
Alas for Victor, it does not die.
At first, Victor agrees but then reneges.
Or a mans to his family.
For what is Victor but an absentee father who walks out on his newborn babe?
Over time it becomes obnoxious, and finally exhausting.
Furthermore, the film is likewise still beholden to Universal Pictures and the decades of imitators that came afterward.
De Niros Creature is never allowed to reach the philosophical awareness and Byronic heft of Shelleys literary Creature.
The film presupposes that audiences simply will not accept a Monster as loquacious and soulful as Shelleys.
Instead it maintains Karloffs facial scars and faltering line delivery fromBride of Frankenstein(1935).
That, ultimately, might be the great paradox and problem with adaptingFrankenstein.
And getting away from that legacy remains an almost insurmountable problem.
Perhaps it should be.
How Karloffs Creature is drawn and presented could never be mistaken for Miltons Adam.
