Some thoughts on Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein, via my Substack, "Front Rowe Center"

 

Movie night chez Robert Thomson this evening was Guillermo del Toro’s almost painfully beautiful Frankenstein. 

I should start out by stating flatly that while I read the novel as a teenager, the film oeuvre has never been my chosen wheelhouse. In cinema, the story has always been a cold one, no matter how lush the cinematography in the later films, or how lurid the gothic horror, or how saturated the colours, à la Hammer horror. 

The characters were stock, the nuances went unexplored, and there were precious few scenes that couldn’t be rounded up with a piercing shriek or two. 

What struck me most, about del Toro’s version—and this did not occur to me until tonight— was that I had been fed a sleekly patriarchal view of Victor Frankenstein my whole life. 

In films, he is portrayed as a monomaniacal alpha male “tortured genius,” and even his flaws are wrapped in a spoor of the sort of manly grandeur and hubris that no woman would ever be allowed. 

The audience might find Victor’s ambition dreadful in some ways, but the invitation to admire it is obliquely proffered, and that invitation has been accepted by audiences since 1931 when the James Whale version for Universal Pictures made its début. 

Del Toro, on the other hand, isn’t afraid to show the complexity of the abused, spoiled, masculine adult child, riddled with jealousy and resentment, as well as ambition and genius, playing with matches. 

Where the creation of life might conceivably inspire a protective maternal reaction in a female creator, in the case of del Toro’s Victor Frankenstein it primarily inspires possessive wonder, curiosity, disdain, and a delight in his own brilliance, all of it marbled with an appropriate undercurrent of horror. 

Indeed, if that had been the reaction of a female creator, the audience might have branded her “the true monster” long before such a judgement was heaped upon Victor. 

The interactions between the creature and Elizabeth (played by Mia Goth)—in the del Toro version, Victor’s brother’s fiancée—allow for a feminine perspective that has been conspicuously absent from other filmed versions of this story, and she serves as a prism through which the humanity and vulnerability of the creature is even more brightly lit. 

For Goth’s Elizabeth, there is none of the screaming, fainting, and clichéd “delicate white lady” pity of yore. In its place is a warm, intelligent empathy and kindness that fuels one of the two primary heart-centres of the story—Elizabeth’s and the creature’— that made me feel as though Mary Shelley’s moral spirit was finally allowed to be present in a film of her novel, and have a say. 

Del Toro did not flinch from showing the cruelty and cowardice it would take to create a being, then try to destroy it because its existence had become inconvenient. With his creation, replicates a twisted, godlike version of the abusive inhumanity he suffered at the hands of his own father. In fact Victor’s cruelty and petulance are front and centre throughout del Toro’s Frankenstein, shown to be two of the relentless forces that shape the entire doomed arc of his life, rendering his ultimate redemption nearly impossible.

Wherever del Toro deviated from the novel, it was to advance the novel’s spirit with an authenticity that burned. In the book, Shelley pointedly addressed the hubris of “playing God,” but film portrayals have focused on a tinny, superficial version of that concept, primarily in the My goodness, imagine what it would take to be that bold! vein. 

The location of the soul, and the debt owed to any being endowed with one, is utterly bypassed, or, at best, skimmed over. As an insightful and articulate atheist friend pointed out last night, nothing is more like “God” than creating life, then abandoning it to a word of pain, loneliness, and silence. 

In a completely agnostic way, del Toro unambiguously flirts with the notion that the creature has been endowed with a soul, in spite of the artificiality of its creation. It’s hard to overstate how shattering that moment in the film was for Robert and me. 

Oscar Isaacs delivered a stellar, very complex iteration of Victor Frankenstein—no small feat in a character that has been done, and overdone, for decades. 

That said the real heart of the film was Jacob Elordi’s astonishing performance as the creature, which captured me from his very first moment onscreen, and which moved me (literally) to tears at various points. 

He allows us to see the creature as beautiful and fully sensitive, which in turn supercharges our own empathy and compassion for him, thereby transporting the tale itself into deep realms it has not previously charted. 

Whereas previous films iterations of the character have allowed us to feel pity as well as horror—think Karloff, Lee, or even De Niro—Elordi’s version goes far, far beyond anything as mundane as pity, far beyond empathy, into actual identification—if only for the universally accessible knowledge of the agony of abandonment.

I’ve enjoyed Elordi’s work in everything, but this performance was next level star-making in its humanity. You’re really going to have to watch the film to see what I mean, because waxing in too much detail risks spoilers, and this masterpiece deserves better than reviews spoilers. 

Criticisms of the film as being “too long” are mildly interesting, but one of the advantages of having been born some years back is that my attention span wasn’t shaped by MTV and music videos, and Frankenstein isn’t really a film for fidgety or stupid people anyway. 

This film broke my heart, and it stayed broken for hours afterwards. I think Mary Shelley herself would have loved del Toro’s Frankenstein, even as she would likely have marvelled at how the essence of her novel—and the questions at the core of it—took 207 years for a filmmaker to finally get just right.

© 2025 by Michael Rowe

Portrait by Kit Morrison of Kit & Lauryn, July, 2025

 

© 2025 by Kit Morrison 

New short story on the runway, just in time for Halloween

 

Having written nonfiction and essays exclusively since the COVID lockdown and my bout with cancer, I was beyond thrilled to return to my fiction roots to write "The Green" for Tom Deady's forthcoming short story anthology The Rack II which will be released on October 14th, just in time for Halloween. Writers always say how honoured they are to appear in the company of other writers in a given volume, but in the case of The Rack II, I mean it quite literally, both professionally and personally. This is a stellar lineup. And working with Tom, an editor who is both visionary and pragmatic, in no small part because of his own prolific career as a topflight horror writer, was an unequivocal privilege.

Jonathan Joss (1965-2025)

I'm old enough, and not naïve enough, to know why the murder of Indigenous actor Jonathan Joss, who voiced the character of John Redcorn on Kong of the Hill isn't the front page of every newspaper in North America. 

Or why Time magazine, for instance, has not done a cover story on the way Trump regime's relentless campaign to terrorize, even eradicate, queer people has granted tacit permission for a spike in violence against them by their fellow Americans. 

Or how we know that Germany experienced these exact same rumblings of political thunder before the murderous hurricane that was the Holocaust.

I know that, at the end of the day, there will always be people who see queer people as less American, even less human, than other people. The taste in the back of my mouth is my earliest memories of the social climate of the 1970s, when I first became sure of my difference, and the 1980s, when I first came out.

I remember the edicts, both spoken and unspoken, that we were, at best, an annoyance that people wished would go away, and that those people would help that happen, one way or another.

But here are the bare facts in the Joss murder, in June of 2025: after an extended two year period of terrorizing Joss and his spouse, Tristan Kern de Gonzales, their neighbour burned their house to the ground with their three dogs inside.

Two years later, the couple were still receiving their mail at the site. On the fatal day, doing a mail run, the couple found the skull of one of their dead dogs laid out in the driveway, obscenely festooned with his harness and leash.

Then, as the couple grieved anew, in near hysterics, their neighbour, who’d been harassing them for years pulled out a gun and began firing. Joss died pushing Kern de Gonzales out of the way of the bullets, taking them himself instead, and dying in his spouse's arms.

This is why I've grown to hate platitudes like "love is love." This is why I'm no longer interested entertaining the outer edge of a "both sides" argument when it comes to LGBTQ+ existence.

It's why I am utterly impervious to emotionally manipulative claims about the "danger to women and girls" of trans women using the women's restroom, claims that are based 100% on lies, with no facts to back them up, and which are designed to wrap ugly transphobic bigotry in the mantle of both feminist respectability and a dated, violent, corrosive form of fake chivalry that is rooted not in the love of women, but in male ownership of them.

It's because I can still taste the hatred of the 1970s in the back of my throat this morning, reading about this murder, and because that hatred should have died out fifty years ago. Progress is designed to move in only one direction, not to be fractured and maimed, and turned back on itself, repurposed into something horrifying, and terribly, terribly old.

It's because this should never, ever, still be happening, and because the outrage our fellow citizens ought to be feeling— friends, family, and allies, political and otherwise—should be rattling the very rafters of heaven right now.

RIP, Mr. Joss, and peace and comfort to his suffering spouse, Mr. Kern de Gonzales, who is currently living the nightmare that all of us who love on our own terms—our natural terms—dread most.

Chasing the rain

 

I wrote all day today until I was crossed-eyed, then had a late lunch and went for a walk through the boneyard.  I honestly believed my intention was to clear my mind, and to refresh my memories for something I'm working on in which it features prominently, but the truth is, it's one of the places where my memories of Beckett are most prominent. 

I had my ear buds in, and my phone was playing Rachel Portman's exquisite piano-rich score for The Cider House Rules when the rain started to fall, first lightly, then more heavily. 

It occurred to me that children love the rain—they're taught to scream and run for cover, something they've perfected by middle age, but it doesn't come naturally to them. What's natural to them is being in the moment, and finding magic in it, if there's any magic to be found. 

When you're a little older, and you have nowhere you particularly need to be, the rain, particularly in spring, matters less and less. Beckett loved it. It just sluiced off his coat like it was an oilskin. Maybe that's something older people and dogs share. By the time my walk was over, I was drenched. I had an ache in my right hand, my leash hand, and in my chest. I crossed my arms as I walked, something I almost never do. 

I've written about ghosts and haunted houses, even haunted graveyards, but the sweetest ghost haunts the one down the street. I don't know how many more visits to the boneyard I have left in me. If the rain sluicing down your face and soaking your hair makes you feel younger, as you walk slower and slower, savouring the heresy of utterly not caring if you get wet, or how wet you get, the weight of the memories of the people, and the dogs, you've loved and lost has the opposite effect. 

On the way home, far up ahead in the park, an athletic young man walked an athletic young black Labrador. He was wearing a hoodie, so I didn't see his face, but I could imagine his expression as he tugged at his Labrador's leash to bring him closer and get him to focus a bit as the torrent fell straight down from the grey sky. 

I remembered the words of Ecclesiastes: "Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth; and let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth, and walk in the ways of thine heart, and in the sight of thine eyes." 

Good luck getting your Labrador to pay attention in the rain, buddy. Do yourself a favour, though? Pay attention yourself. Hold these memories. Cherish them. Every single moment of them is what life is made of, whether you know it yet or not. 

New book news

I'm delighted to share that my third essay collection is forthcoming. I'm thrilled to be back with the good people at Cormorant Books, one of Canada's premier literary publishers, and the team that shaped my second collection, OTHER MEN'S SONS, into a prize-winner in 2004. Apologies in advance to anyone who thought I might have been felled by illness, or other misfortune, or that I might be keeping quiet for the next four years. There has never been a more pressing time for writers, especially Canadian ones, to do what we were designed to do. Many thanks, as always, to my agent, Sam Hiyate, who quarterbacked the deal, and who has always been in my court, and to Cormorant Books for consistently providing a venue for the best Canadian writing—and a belief in its importance.

'Twas heaven here with you

Last night, the Hero MD™ and I said goodnight to our beloved Beckett for the very last time. In the past month, Beckett’s health and mobility had taken a striking downturn, and the quality of his life no longer honoured the life he’d lived. While the decision to release him from pain and fear was the most responsible, compassionate, and loving decision for Beckett, my brain and my broken heart are temporarily misaligned. The gift of having had this gentle, perfect, precious little soul placed into my care and keeping for his lifetime was one of the greatest blessings of my own life. This photo of Beckett drying off on the dock at Gyles Point, chewing one of Chuck’s fire sticks, is from August 2015. The only thing Beckett loved more than snow was water, especially up in Apsley, on Chandos Lake, in the company of my godchildren, Kate and Michael, who adored him, and whom he adored. I hope that, somehow, by some miracle, time itself curves and bends in the afterlife, and Beckett is back there with all of us, in an eternal summer at the lake, feeling nothing but the warmth of the sun on his soft black fur, and our love enveloping him. This grief is vast and fathomless and terrible. The house is missing its soft, warm nexus, and my empty arms ache. Rest well, my sweet baby. You gave us everything.