Frankenstein 1994 Movie Review

 Frankenstein movie review

This blog is written in response to the thinking activity given by Yesha Bhatt Ma’am at the Department of English, MKBU.

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1994)

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is the movie based on the novel Frankenstein or the modern Prometheus by Mary Shelley. The movie was released on 4th November, 1994. The movie was nominated for the Best Makeup and Hairstyle.

The movie is directed by Kenneth Branagh who is also the main actor and plays the titular role of the Victor Frankenstein. The character of the creature is played by the great Hollywood actor, Robert De Niro. The character of Elizabeth is portrayed by the actress Helena Bonham Carter.

The Story

The movie tells the story of Victor Frankenstein who is on his way to pursue the career of doctor but when his mother dies in the process of  giving birth to his brother he becomes sad and thoughts of creating something to prevent death by science.

The Title of the movie says that it is Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein but it has also adapted some scenes of the movie 1931 and also have modified some scenes like making Elizabeth the creature's bride.

The movie also seems to focus too much on Victor’s character but the strong appearance of Robert De Niro as Creature overpowers him.

Characters

In this movie every characters are very melodramatic in expressing emotions. We can see that when Victor’s  mother dies- his fathers reaction, when Victor creates the creature, when Victor's brother dies- Elizabeth’s reactions etc. also when The creature tells how he killed his brother, Victor's reactions are not so good.

The makeup of the creature seems real and convincing. Also the gurney of the creature is shown very effectively.

The emotions and sufferings that he goes through, we can find in Niro’s acting. 

Movies setup

The setup of the movie is also very dramatic. We see the  lightning and stormy atmosphere when victor’s mother dies and also when he creates the monster and every time when some serious actions happen. The experiment of victor also seems very exaggerated and stylized. 

So this movie is basically in the middle of being the perfect adaptation of the novel and being realistic or creative.

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Frankenstein or The modern Prometheus

 Frankenstein or The modern Prometheus 

 

This blog is written in response to the thinking activity given by Yesha Bhatt Ma’am about  the novel Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus By Mary Shelly.

 

Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, is an 1818 novel written by English author Mary Shelley. Frankenstein tells the story of Victor Frankenstein, a young scientist who creates a sapient creature in an unorthodox scientific experiment. 

 

Why was Victor not able to accept his dream experiment and its result?

It all started like the other things created, for the betterment of humankind. Victor also wanted to create something and offer humankind the new living species of race. He wanted to cheat death by creating the creature. As a young scientist Victor was ambitious and enthusiastic about his new thinking of creating new living beings.

As time passes he becomes more and more involved in it that he starts to think of himself as a superior person, who has the ability to create and give life to a whole new creature. He starts to think of himself as the new god of the upcoming race of creatures created by him.

When he sees his creation he becomes disappointed by it, because of its appearance it looks like a monster and it horrifice him. He was warned by others that his unnatural methods were harmful and he started to believe in it. At first he thinks that the creature was dead and was going to get rid of it but when the creature comes to him, he becomes shocked and does not want it to find out by any other, but the creature runs away because of the strange behaviour of victor.

 

What made Creature a Monster?

Creature created by Victor was like a newborn child that does not know society, people, world, what is good and bad, morels, value. He does not know how to express the emotions of how to speak his own feelings or literally speak anything. From the first moment of his consciousness he just received the hate of people.

He was created out of the organs of dead bodies of people who once lived, maybe that's why he was fast to learn everything on his own but still he needed someone to guide him in the world, to make him understand how society works.

Even children learn what they see, so it's justified that the creature starts to hurt people because that's what he sees and learns from men.

So it was definitely the society and Victor who made the creature a monster or think of him as a monster.

Can appearance overpower reality?

Yes, appearance can definitely overpower reality. Victor's creation of the creature was just what he made. He made him out of the organs of dead body and never thought about how it will look like. He wanted to create just a living thing but when he saw his creation alive he did not like his creation. From that we can see the double standards of people.

People have this standard of fairness and darkness, beauty and ugly, that is deeply placed in our mind. We always want to see what is considered to be beautiful, cute, adorable, but we never are interested in the insight of the people. Very few of us are interested in the inner beauty, rest of us only do the outer observation and move to the other thing. 

In the case of creatures, happens the same. People only consider his size and body to asume of him as a monster. Victor, people in the city, or the family in the woods only see the outlook of the creature and start to beat him and become frightened by him. Victor was his creator but he also does not try to understand him or care for him.

 

Who is suffering from Deformity in the novel? Which kind of deformity and disability is there? Who decides what deformity is?

There are two types of deformity, one that is in the body or the certain part and the other is the inner deformity. If we consider the first one then it is in the character of the creature. He has a huge and different type of shape in the body because his creation happened out of the organs collected from the different dead bodies. So he has a different type of look because of it and that's why he suffers a lot from his creator and society. He receives hate and gets beaten up and considered as a monster.

If we consider the inner deformity and it was in the character of victor and the society. They have that mind set and double standards that are really harmful to others and that's why others suffer a lot.

Who is the Villain in Frankenstein.

In this story it is very hard to tell who is the true villain. 

Victor was a scientist who wanted to give something fruitful out of the science that he deeply believed in. He wanted to create life that can overcome death that is hard for normal human beings. But he was also one of the humans so he also was made of the foundation from which others are born. He was bound by the thinking process of other humans. He also had a place in society and in high potions. He wanted to become famous and brag about his creation. But it is ruined by the creature who does not know about human nature. Victor plays the major role of the creature being a monster and he does not understand him till the end. So we can define him as a monster.

Creature was created by victor was the main character who do all sort of bad things like murder and hurting people. He kills Victor's brother and father and Elizabeth and other people. He exacts revenge on victor by killing the people who he care for and becomes like a monster. But we can not consider him as monster of villain, because whatever he has done was what he learned form humans and he himself was got hurt form society.

The society

Society is the true villain in this story. First the society tries to stop Victor from experimenting and doing something different and Victor also becomes conscious about what others will think of his creation and he becomes disappointed with the creature. Everytime when people with new ideas and methods try to do something new and innovative, society always questions them and tries to put a hold on them.

Society also disapproves of things that are not like them. When we don't find common in each other we start to get suspicious of each other and start to hate each other. We want everything based on our standards. Society makes invisible rules around it. When someone breaks itm they start to hate them, harm them, and try to get rid of them.

That happens with creatures unknowingly. He was a newborn and does not know about how society works but society hurts him and makes him do bad things. They make him a monster.

So in all sense society is the main villain of the novel, Frankenstein.

 

I have also created a blog on the movie review of the movie Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.

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Thinking Activity- Pride and Prejudice

Pride and Prejudice

This is the thinking activity given by Yesha Bhatt Ma'am on the Novel Pride and Prejudice By the Author Jane Austen.

Which version of the novel is  more appealing? Novel or movie adaptation? Why?

Novel is always the best option than watching movie adaptations of it, because the novel is the main source and will be more elaborative than the movie. In the novel we get more and more about the characters, contemporary society, people's mindset, values, culture, idols, etc. in the movie we see that they compress the three hundred four hundred pages in only two or three hours. 

Movies also have their own advantages. Visualisations of the plot and scenes make things easier for the movie makers. They can symbolise things and make atmosphere for audience to understand the characters, like in the beginning of the movie pride and prejudice we see elizabeth walking while reading a book, that makes audience realise that she is educated, and in that era is she is educated than she might be also resisting of the society and intelligent. One can interpret so much out of a single scene.

We have to also consider the present time.Nowadays people judge books by the page numbers. In the present time people don't prefer to read a book, they rather watch movies. The novel is also very old and wellreaded. So people would like to see it into movie form.

As a student of literature I prefer the novel but also if we consider this time it's best to watch the movie version of the novel. 

Pride and Prejudice movie is the best version of the novel by Jane Austin. But it also makes some changes in the original text. But that also contributes to making a good impression out of the movie. 

Character of Elizabeth 

Elizabeth is the female protagonist and one of the most famous characters in English literature. She is twenty year old and the second daughter of the Bennet family. She is also very intelligent and quick witted.

She is a rebellious woman who does what she thinks is right. She does not believe in the system created by society. She is also a woman with pride, we can see that in the scene when Mr. Darcy says that she is tolerable, her pride gets hurt and she develops prejudice about him. Then she becomes judgemental about  Mr.Darcy and starts to hate him.

Later when she realise that she was wrong about Mr.Darcy than she starts to love him and also admit that she was wrong about him in front of her father. That discribers that she is also honest and can admit her faults.

Character of Mr. Darcy.

Fitzwilliam Darcy is the male protagonist of the novel Pride and Prejudice. In the first view it appears that he is a rich, arrogant and harsh person who does not like anyone except himself and is full of prejudice.

He judges Elizabeth by her family background and also disapproves of Jane for his friend Mr. Bingley. But he passionately falls in love with Elizabeth and starts to understand her, then he also solves problems of Elizabeth and her family like finding her sister and reuniting Jane with Mr.Bingley. With the story we can also see the progress of the character of Mr.Darcy. From introvert and arrogant he becomes a very nice character and a gentleman.

Contemporary time and society depicted in the novel Pride and Prejudice.

The story of Pride and Prejudice is set during the start of the 19th century. We can see the deeply woven social element of contemporary society by the author Jane Austine. 

Theme of marriage and land ownership is connected to the love stories in the novel. We can see the beneficials of the marriage and alliance and inheritance of the wealth and properties. Novel also reflects the class system and standards of the contemporary time. The strong point of the novel is to describe the position of women in society.

“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”

If you were the director or the screenplay writer of the movie what sort of changes would you make in the movie?

I will make the character of Mrs. Bennet more reasonable as a mother than as a matchmaker. And I will give a little more space to the plot of elopement of lydia and wickham because that situation goes unnoticed in the movie. 

Who would be your choice of actors to play characters?

I would like to chose characters

Elizabeth: Nushrratt Bharuccha, Chloe Grace Moretz

Mr. Darcy: Hrithik Roshan, Vicky Kaushal, Gerard Butler, Henry Cavil

Jane: Disha Patani, Emma Watson

Mr. Bingley: Rajkumar Rao, Eddie Redmeyde

Wickham: Vijay Verma, Orlando Bloom

Mr. Collins: Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Simon Pegg

Write a note on the scene which you liked most in the movie.

The scene which I liked the most is when Elizabeth confess her feelings for Mr. Darcy in front of her father. That finally she understands Mr.Darcy and realises that she was in love with him all along. She was just being suburb and and was blinded by her pride that she does not see the good side of Mr. Darcy.

"Till this moment I never knew myself."

Compare the narrative strategy of the novel and movie.

In the novel the narration was done from the third person point of view. So the author narrates the story and describes everything by the words, but the movie director does not have to do that, he can describe everything in symbolic way and can represent characters by the actors behaviour then everything  becomes easy to understand. We can see that effect by the presentation of the first scene where Elizabeth comes with reading a book by that we can easily understand that she might be intelligent and educated or the ball scene where we first see Mr. Darcy we can assume by his facial expressions and behaviour that he is an introverted and rude type of person.

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Thinking Activity- Wordsworth's Preface

This blog is written in response to the thinking activity of bridge course- Wordsworth's Preface, given in the Department of English, MKBU.

Wordsworth's preface to lyrical ballads.

William Wordsworth was a great English Romantic Poet. Wordsworth and  Samuel Taylor Coleridge together launch the Romantic Age in English literature with their joint publication of  Lyrical Ballads. In the preface of Lyrical Ballads Wordsworth gave his famous definition of poetry and his idea of What is a Poet. 

Difference between classicism and romanticism.

Classicism: 

  The imitation or use primarily of the style and aesthetic principles of ancient Greek and Roman classical art and literature. The term 'neoclassicism' is often used in reference to revival of classicism.

Romanticism: 

     It is a movement in literature that lasted from about 1750 to 1870. Characterised by reliance on the imagination and subjectivity of approach freedom of thought and expressions and idealization of nature.

In classicism poets believed in the intellectual. Poets like Pope and Dryden, their poetry was intellectual. They believed that restrained was ruling the world. They relied on classical masters like Aristotle,Plato and Socrates. They believed in them and followed tham. So their poems were well made but they lacked emotions and not connecting to common people. Classical poems were more based on city and urban life. The classical poems were more focused on objectivity. 

In romanticism, there were poets like Wordsworth, Keats, Shelly. They believed that  imagination is the guiding source for creating poetry. Their poetry was highly imaginative. They believed in liberty, so we find their free play of emotions and imagination. They turned to inspiration from mediaeval poets and writers. Medievalism prevailed during the romantic period. They wrote about rustic life and rural people. They were subjective writers.

Wordsworth says "what is a poet?" rather than who is the poet?

According to Wordsworth " A poet is a man speaking to men, endowed with more lively sensibility, more enthusiasm and tenderness. Who has a greater knowledge of human nature and a more comprehensive soul, who rejoices more than other men in the spirit of life; habitually impelled to creative volition, passion and situation where he does not find them.

A poet not only has a more lively sensibility but also a more comprehensive soul and greater powers of imagination. He is also a man who has thought long and deep. He does not create on the spur of the moment, but contemplates and reflects in tranquillity till he passions anew and it is then that creation begins.

What is Poetic Diction? According to Wordsworth's preface.

Poetic diction is a choice of words that lends unique style for each individual poet or author in their chosen language.

Wordsworth in his preface describes his poetic diction.He says in it that " the majority of the following poems are to be considered as experiments. They were written chiefly with a view to ascertain how far the language of conversation in the middle and lower classes of society is adapted to the purpose of poetic pleasure."

Wordsworth's poetic diction was about the common language of the common people. He believed that the language of poetry should be easier to understand for all kinds of people. The class language is only used to express that kind of feeling. His poetic diction expresses the overflow of the fillings that he gets when he is with nature and he does not fake it with exaggerating language elements or using strong language that is considered classic.

The definition of poetry.

According to Wordsworth’s definition of poetry, “ The spontaneous overflow of powerful feeling: it takes its origin from emotions recollected in tranquillity.”

So the poet said that poetry is based on the powerful feelings that are reflected as memories.those emotions are too strong that he expresses it by the poetry. Expressing those emotions is not that easy, poets have to think deeper about those emotions because poets are more learned and thoughtful than other people, so they have to become more aware of their actions.

That’s why the poet says “it takes its origins from emotions recollected in tranquillity.”

Wordsworth's poem The Daffodils and his poetic creed

We can easily understand Wordsworth’s definition of poem  by his own famous poem “The Daffodils”

The Daffodils is a lyric poem by William Wordsworth and was written in 1804 and was published in 1807 in Poems, in Two Volumes.

The poem contains four stanzas, the first three stanzas are in the past tense where he sees the field full of daffodils and becomes impressed by that natural scenery.  He describes daffodils in second stanza like,

“Continuous as the stars that shine

and twinkle on the Milky Way,”

And he express his feelings in third stanza by lines’

“A poet could not but be gay,

in such a jocund company:

I gazed—and gazed—but little thought

what wealth the show to me had brought:”

The fourth stanza is written in the present tense as he lies on the couch in his house and is in the mood of seriousness and in tension he tries to remember that field of Daffodils to feel the joy and content that he felt in the past when he visited it. He express it in lines like,

“For oft, when on my couch I lie

In vacant or in pensive mood,

They flash upon that inward eye

Which is the bliss of solitude;”

After remembering those movements of solitude and of nature he comes back to the joyful mood and is pleased by those memories. We can see that in the line’

“And then my heart with pleasure fills,

And dances with the daffodils.”

In this poem we can easily see that the poet used two tenses, for the first three stanzas he used past tense and for the last stanza he used present tense. If we see his poetry definition he says that, "it is a spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings.” as we can see that in the first three stanzas  he is overwhelmed by the daffodils. And in the third stanza he remembers daffodils when he is in deep thoughts. So that presents the later portion of definition that “ it takes its origins form emotions recollected in tranquillity”. So this poem becomes a perfect example of Wordsworth's definition of poetry.

So we can say that Wordsworth had very good insight for poetry and had deeper knowledge to understand and also explain the poetry to the other people and use the language of the common men. Provide reading of easy language and try to break the barrier of so called class of language and experiment poetry and bring in the romantic movement.

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