Frankenstein Movie Review

Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein is a 1994 drama directed by Kenneth Branagh, starring Kenneth Branagh as Victor Frankenstein, Robert De Niro as the Monster and Helena Bonham Carter as Elizabeth. The plot starts off when Frankenstein’s beloved mother dies during the birth of his younger brother William, sparking his desire to “cure” death. He studies many scientific texts and frantically experiments in order to find a formula that could revive the dead. Eventually, he works hard to bring a life form back, but in the process becomes so obsessed with his work that he completely isolates himself from everything around him, including his childhood love, Elizabeth. When he successfully completes the monster, however, he realizes what he has done and ultimately abandons it, in hopes that it will die. The monster goes on to live, although it is shunned at practically every turn, due to its hideous appearance. It finally meets Frankenstein, after killing his younger brother William, and demands the one thing that it had been denied since creation; love. He demands that Frankenstein create him a bride, and when this request is refused, the monster kills Elizabeth on Frankenstein’s wedding night. Infuriated, Frankenstein desperately attempts to bring Elizabeth back, and when he does, she commits suicide due to her horrid appearance and after seeing what resurrection had done to her. The monster flees, and Frankenstein now vows to kill the monster. When he goes to the North Pole in pursuit of the monster however, he dies of pneumonia in the hands of an exploration crew, and is then visited by the monster, who weeps and proclaims Frankenstein as his father. This adaption of Mary Shelly’s classic novel is the most source-loyal movie, and boasts many ideas rooted in many different areas of philosophy, such as aesthetics, the qualities of a human and the dichotomy of good and evil. Beauty is portrayed in this move as very objective, because even though the monster initially had a