(Updated after watching the version in which Jonny Lee Miller plays the creation, having swapped roles with Benedict Cumberbatch, who now plays the creator) - I still can't believe that this one took 4 years, in this day and age, to reach these shores. Having said that, I'm real glad that it does not look or feel jaded / dated to that extent.
The prod and the sound design, the intimate camera-work and the score remains the same, along with the rest of the cast (most of them) reprising their characters for this roundabout. Almost everything, and if there are differences, they might have been too minor to warrant attention, especially since I watched the earlier version of this just 2 weeks previously.
However, there is no diluting the effect of all the shocking events that do transpire during the tale's runtime.
In spite of the fact that I've read and seen many adaptations put together (I also remember the Kenneth Branagh attempt on this, with De Niro as the creation), the way the screenplay has been strung together packs a punch every time it delves into the darkness of the human spirit, the depths to which we plumb, and result in another plumbing the same depths.
There is no subtlety in caling out the hypocrisy at play, and that IS a good thing, since it needs to be called out and focused on, in the limited runtime this work of art has. There is no doubt cast on who the bad soul (yep, soul) is, and how that one soul pulls the strings.
Power at play, especially creationist, always evokes the analogy 'giving a baby a loaded gun', and then regretting / complaining about the consequences.
One of my friends remarked that it was more apt the way it was before, since Cumberbatch's Frankenstein was not as powerful as Millers', and Miller's creation/creature was relatively more soft and mellow that our sympathy was with the creature, not accompanied by the fear, disgust and revulsion that we ought to have felt as well, the way it did when Cumberbatch rendered his interpretation of the same character. I agreed with him to a large extent, but did not mind the fact that our sympathies led our emotions rather than it being the other way around.
What would the point have been of another interpretation, if it was more of the same?
These (following) streams of thoughts are based on viewing the version in which Benedict Cumberbatch plays the creation, and Lee Miller his creator.
The story of Frankenstein, as one knows, has been told many times over. The biggest thing this production had going for it, other than the fact that it had Boyle, fresh off of many successes, directing a play such as this, was that both the actors playing contemporary versions of, ahem, a detective who need not remain nameless, in BBC and CBS productions of the same (to be fair, the latter is much too recent, so the coincidence factor is not all that great/wide), varying in the number of episodes and their respective run-times as well. I'm a fan of both series, with each having completed 3 seasons (the CBS rendering with Lee Miller is still going strong on its 3rd, but with 24 45-min episodes to film for each season, while retaining the overall quality, it's not easy going for them.
I'll update this review after the version in which the actors swap parts.
For now, this one was superb, with each actor taking center-stage alternatively as the play progressed. Cumberbatch owns the first act, being born, discarded, and then spending an year with a blind old man who teaches him to read, think and debate. As the play progressed, it was indeed amazing to watch the rotating stage change for each scene in each act, along with listening to the fantastic score enhancing the quality of the production.
Each transition was seamless, and I, for one, was held spellbound by the fact that the actors, especially the leads, could deliver their lines with such conviction and memory. I am a big fan of improvisation, but somehow felt that learning lines and delivering them in character seemed to be very daunting, and having these great actors making it look and sound easy was like watching a master at work, much like watching the great Timothy Spall play Mr. Turner a few weeks back at the cinema.
Going in, I only knew of the main leads, but was surprised to see a pre-Skyfall Naomie Harris as Frankenstein's wife, the only human other than the blind old man who dared to get close to her husband's creation. I confess to being a tad disappointed by some seemingly- stilted line-readings from George Harris, who played M. Frankenstein, who I had seen earlier playing the character Kingsley in the Harry Potter movies, in which his performance and casting seemed pretty apt.
The ending was pitch-perfect, with each character irrevocably linked to the other, needing one another to survive, though they are self- sworn to cause the other's destruction.
A wonderful opportunity afforded to catch this on the big screen, that should not be missed.
