‘Most cinemagoers will suffer through hours of exhausting fight sequences if you just show a bit of leg, even if that leg is grey-green and stitched together.’ Frankenstein
Who do Hollywood directors work for? For the chin-stroker and arthouse enthusiast, sauntering to his seat with a scarf nattily thrown over his shoulder, the answer will forever be me. Film buffs, as they are nauseatingly known, see themselves as the auteur’s dream customer: a discerning critic whose shelves strain under Blu-rays, who abhors big-studio franchises and adores anything with subtitles. They obsess over tableaux and have a fetish for vérité; they cream their jeans over chiaroscuro and positively pant when offered the chance to explain all these terms to a buffoon like you.
Such a chap, recognisable by his round glasses and chin-length mane, sat to my left during a screening of Guillermo del Toro’s new flick Frankenstein. To cut a two-and-a-half-hour story short, I’ll race to the denouement: for all his apparent sophistication and despite being old enough to know better (he and his mortified wife were in their 60s) this guy was not content to sit through an even slightly hokey rehashing of Mary Shelley’s unkillable novel, but had to announce, loudly, “this is awful!” and periodically burst into bitter laughter every few minutes just to let us know that this film was beneath him. Apparently this famous tale of an immortal being fashioned from strangers’ body parts was simply too improbable. About half an hour before the Creature hobbled off into an uncertain dawn, this cantankerous Boomer hobbled into the strip-lit atrium having been told about four times to “shut up or leave!” — but not before turning to the civic-minded Millennial men behind me and showing them his stubby middle finger. Humiliatingly, he left his leather messenger bag on his seat when he stropped off, and returned shortly after to retrieve it. Having contributed a couple of neighbourly shushes myself, I felt vindicated. Who says the young have no grasp of cinema etiquette?
For me, this sordid sideshow animated Del Toro’s new production as much as the great coiled dynamos the scientist uses to fry a somehow still smokin’ hot Jacob Elordi. It was the perfect encapsulation of what the modern director is up against: peevish, cynical and stupid audiences who’ve as much patience and insight as a Cocomelon baby. As a filmmaker whose output lies somewhere between critically acclaimed (The Shape of Water) and cult favourite (Pan’s Labyrinth), Del Toro is a perfect target for film wankers everywhere. His budgets are enormous (Frankenstein cost $120 million courtesy of Netflix); he uses shocking gore and sentimental metaphor, things which impress normal people and therefore put Tarkovsky bores on high alert. He has also fallen victim to a recent Hollywood fever for sexy gothic remakes (think Nosferatu, Wuthering Heights): the A-list seem to spend all their billable hours in frilly shirts and breath-snatching bodices nowadays. Again, this makes snobs suspicious: it wouldn’t do to enjoy a trend — and anyway, do these primitives even know the visual references being attempted here? The scarlet veil of gauze which shrouds Victor’s mother is a symbol of sex and blood, you goons. And when the Creature examines a skull he’s actually doing a Hamlet. But you wouldn’t get that.
To be fair to the insufferable, there is lots to decry about contemporary cinema — but it is not the fault of directors. Filmmakers, like journalists, musicians and politicians, have reluctantly found themselves in the attention economy. As a way of luring viewers away from their phones, many seem to have opted for brighter and breathier versions of the key texts, refreshing the familiar so as not to “challenge” their way to bankruptcy. What results is a kind of creative cannibalism: more and more, the industry is raiding its own archives to lend projects “prestige”.
Del Toro himself described the process of reanimating Frankenstein as “marrying a widow”, which is also an excellent metaphor for the way audiences feel about these films. They are seductive and storied yet can seem gloomy and shop-worn; they are exhaustingly self-referential, borrowing from their black-and-white forebears almost down to the frame. These films are hard to take on their own merit, and any slips — lame dialogue, lapsing English accents — become evidence of disrespect. A period setting only heightens the perfectionism of audiences, who are always suspicious about the fidelity of costumes or scripts and are rightly perturbed by actors with a mouth full of distractingly modern veneers (Emily Blunt in Oppenheimer, you’ve been told). And the greatest crime of all — one which got a big chuckle out of Mr Criterion himself during my screening — is lousy, lazy writing of the kind which produces lines like “you are the monster!” (yes, really).
The story of Frankenstein is by now so familiar that it can only be looked at through tinted glass; dealt with head on, as Del Toro did, and the pilfery will elicit a guaranteed snort from the worst people in the room. The alternative, of course, is to do an Emerald Fennell and produce something so monstrously unfaithful to the text, as next year’s Wuthering Heights threatens to be, that you’ll horrify audiences in an entirely different way.
How to navigate this moviemaking minefield? Film buffs are ready to hate you, Zoomers can barely pay attention and fans of the novel lick their lips whenever you trip up on the source text. Audiences have never been so miserable, so quick to voice their disdain. The more Hollywood reheats the same old gristle, the more critical they are when it’s hard to digest. It all makes a day at the movies a terribly tense affair.
But I am here to offer a solution. Now, I am no buff of anything, and the most moviemaking I’ve done is filming my classmate dressed as Mother Mary getting covered in paint for an edgy school project, the evidence of which I’m sure is out there somewhere. But I do know one thing: it may be a hard time to be a director, but you can guarantee that at least half your audience will leave your film happy if you just cast Jacob Elordi.
I jest. But am I wrong? Fennell seems to have discovered that cheat code, casting him as her Heathcliff after his star turn in Saltburn. There’s a logic at work: as Frankenstein shows, most cinemagoers will suffer through hours of twitching spinal cords, bleak shots of Georgian Edinburgh and exhausting fight sequences if you just show a bit of leg, even if that leg is grey-green and stitched together. It’s been a long time since it was acceptable to go to the movies simply for the purpose of being entertained, but what I wish I could tell Señor Cinema is that just enjoying a film is OK — it may even be the point.
Perhaps it’s not film which is depreciating, it is audiences: we are becoming hypercritical, joyless, cynical and distractible. But I am hopeful that, just as happened before my very eyes, vigilantes will send film buffs packing. If you must snort, do it in your own living room. And to those of us still clinging to the right to watch a slightly silly movie and be thrilled by an explosion, or something ghoulish or, yes, Jacob Elordi, remember the best weapon at your disposal as an Englishman: you can always, always tut.
