Guillermo del Toro is taking a more sympathetic approach to the undead creature at the heart of his version of “Frankenstein.”
“Somebody asked me the other day, does it have really scary scenes?” del Toro said during a conversation at the Cannes Film Festival with Oscar-winning composer Alexandre Desplat. “For the first time, I considered that. It’s an emotional story for me. It’s as personal as anything. I’m asking a question about being a father, being a son… I’m not doing a horror movie — ever. I’m not trying to do that.”
Desplat and del Toro were on stage discussing their collaborations on films like “The Shape of Water” and “Pinocchio” as a way of highlighting the pivotal role that music plays in moviemaking. They are working together once again on “Frankenstein,” which Netflix will release this fall. It sounds like they are aligned in not going for obvious scares in their adaptation of Mary Shelley’s Gothic novel.
“Guillermo’s cinema is very lyrical, and my music is rather lyrical too,” Desplat said. “So I think the music of ‘Frankenstein’ will be something very lyrical and emotional… I’m not trying to write horrific music.”
The two have yet to finalize the score, but they sound like they are getting close. “We’re finding the emotion,” del Toro said. “And what I can say is, for me, it’s an incredibly emotional movie.”
In del Toro’s films like “The Shape of Water” or “Cronos” or even “Hellboy,” he often seems to empathize most with the kind of creatures that other moviemakers portray as monsters. That doesn’t interest him.
“In ‘The Shape of Water,’ the creature is frightening during the first 15 minutes and then becomes a very moving character,” Desplat noted.
Love Film & TV?
Get your daily dose of everything happening in music, film and TV in Australia and abroad.
“The first time I thought I was going to avenge the creature was when Marilyn Monroe is coming out [of the movies] in ‘The Seven Year Itch’ with Tom Ewell, and she says the creature just needed somebody to like him,’” del Toro said. “I fell in love with Marilyn, and I fell in love with the creature in that scene at a very early age. And I thought, you know, all we have is people that look at people the wrong way. That’s what we have in this world.”
“Frankenstein” stars Jacob Elordi, Oscar Isaac and Mia Goth. In addition to his work on “Frankenstein,” Desplat also scored two films in competition at Cannes this year, Wes Anderson’s “The Phoenician Scheme” and Tarik Saleh’s “Eagles of the Republic.”
From Variety US