Frankenstein Movie Review
By Julia Killeen
Summary
A young doctor named Victor Frankenstein leaves his hometown of Geneva to attend Medical School. While there he studies to become better acquainted with human Anatomy and the world of Chemistry. Victor has always had a great obsession with death, which leads him to take on the task of creating life. He composes a "monster" with the body parts of convicts and the brain of a brilliant scientist. The monster comes to life and is thrust right into society. He then realizes that he will never be accepted by others and he then seeks revenge on all of those that Victor loves. Towards the end of the movie Victor is alone, all of his family members are dead and he once has to create a life, but is forced. Victor has to create a partner for the monster to love, but with all the pain he is feeling he decides to use Elizabeth and bring her back to life for himself. Elizabeth ends up killing herself because Victor and the monster are fighting over her. Victor ends up dying while telling his story on the ship. The monster is found weeping over his dead body, and those on the ship decide that Victor deserves a funeral. While the funeral is in session
Personal Opinion
I loved the novel, but the movie was even better. I spent one of my Saturday afternoons watching this 1994 version of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Director Branagh does an excellent job at keeping the original ideas from Mary Shelley's text. I would definitely watch this movie again just for pleasure. All of the scenes were done really well and does justice to the novel. I would recommend that everyone who reads the novel watch this version of the story its done with great directing and acting. There were definitely some gruesome scenes in the movie, but its a horror film. Another thing that made this movie easily watchable was that it was really realistic and it seemed like it could really happen in real life. I am rating this movie at ten brains out of ten brains.
Book Vs. Movie
There weren't only a few differences between the movie and the book, but the directors did a great job keeping the underlining scenes. There only differences were really in how characters acted and how they presented ideas...
In the movie Victor and Elizabeth's relationship is much stronger and they're much more physical and express their feelings.
In the movie Victor steals the body parts from the prison, not from graveyards around the school like in the book.
In the book Dr. Frankenstein uses the brain of a criminal for his monster and in the movie he takes his mentors brain, a brilliant scientists.
Throughout different parts of the movie Dr. Frankenstein has a helper, but it's just another student that he met at school. He helps Frankenstein to a certain extent, but he still thinks he's crazy to create life. In the book he doesn't even have a helper.
The book spends a lot of time on the creatures time spent observing the De Lacey family ( Felix, Agatha and Safie) in their cabin, the movie spends nearly no time showing how the monster learns how to read, write and speak. They also give you the impression that he just learns what love and emotions are.
In the movie Elizabeth goes and visits Victor while he's at college. This never takes place in the novel.
Factoids
The monster is played by Robert DeNiro.
Director Branagh spends much of the movie developing Victor and Elizabeth's relationship and how their wedding night is done.
The First Frankenstein Movie was originally made by Thomas Edison in 1910 for the Edison Kinetogram.
Elizabeth ( Helena Carter) Monster ( Robert DeNiro) Henry ( Tom Hulce)