Frankenstein (2004 made-for-TV miniseries)

FRANKENSTEIN (2004 made-for-TV miniseries)

I haven't read Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein in over two decades, so I cannot discuss how Hallmark's miniseries (which runs two hours and fifty-minutes without commercials) fares in terms of being a faithful adaptation of the book (though many reviews on IMDB praise this version's faithfulness to the source material). The tale opens with the crew of the Prometheus (a ship caught in ice) rescuing Viktor Frankenstein (who had been pursuing his bipedal creation on a dog sled) from freezing to death. Viktor tells his life story to the ship's captain, so the bulk of the story is a flashback to the events described by Frankenstein (the narrative returns to the captain and Viktor on the ship several times). The plot moves from Viktor's childhood (when his parents adopted an orphan named Elizabeth) to his time at a university where he immerses himself in absorbing all he can learn about chemistry, physics, and science in general. Viktor develops a hypothesis about how to bring the dead back to life, and he tests his ideas on a dead dog that he manages to momentarily resurrect. Not content to experiment on animals, Viktor assembles a human out of various corpse parts scavenged from the local graveyard. One stormy night, Viktor brings his creature to life. It escapes into the community and takes a coat with Viktor's journal in one pocket. The monster (which is more articulate and intelligent than in most filmed versions of this story) reads the journal and realizes that it is the creation of Viktor Frankenstein. It somehow finds its way to the Frankenstein estate in search of its creator, accidentally kills Viktor's young brother, and frames a servant girl named Justine for the killing. Viktor manages to locate and confront the creature, and it demands that Viktor create a female mate with the promise that the two monsters will exist peacefully outside of civilization if Frankenstein complies. Viktor agrees, but his friend Henry (upon learning of the dreadful experiments) convinces him not to proceed. In the presence of the monster, Viktor burns the not-yet-reanimated body of the mate. The creature vows that it will find Viktor on his wedding night. Viktor inexplicably does not tell his bride-to-be (creepily enough, his stepsister Elizabeth) about the danger they're in. The creature kills Henry, and a grief-stricken Viktor gets on with his life and marries Elizabeth. Viktor's creation does indeed track down the happy couple in their honeymoon suite and kills Elizabeth. Viktor pursues the monster (it leaves a series of cryptic notes for Viktor to find) and ends up on the dog sled from the prologue chasing the creature across an icy landscape. Viktor dies aboard the Prometheus after finishing his tale, and the ship's captain watches as the creature carries its dead maker off into the blizzard.

My main problem with this version of Frankenstein is that the story is supposed to be the events Viktor describes to the captain of the Prometheus, yet there are numerous scenes in which Viktor is not present. How did he know what the monster was up to when it was off on its own? This quibble aside, the Hallmark version of Frankenstein is quite watchable and boasts marvelous production values for a made-for-TV endeavor. Nothing jolted me out of the “reality” of the tale – I noticed no anachronisms in terms of the environments or dialogue, but then I've never been to modern day Europe and certainly have no idea what it was like during the time period in which this yarn takes place, so how would I know if something was dreadfully off-key? With a cast that includes Donald Sutherland (as the Prometheus captain), William Hurt (as Viktor's college mentor), Julie Delpy (Viktor's mother), and Luke Goss (the creature), the 2004 made-for-TV miniseries version of Frankenstein is not wanting for talent. It's not a project that warrants or demands repeat viewings, but it's worthy of a look (especially for fans of the Shelley novel).