ꪆৎ my name is junie :) my pronouns are they/them and im 20
! i draw whatever i want & some things i like are GDT's Frankenstein, Disco elysium, psychonauts, spiderman, slime rancher & ape escape
16+ please !! basic dni, be normal, feel free to submit any asks!
side note !! i also really like music, bugs, fashion & interior design, especially vintage, so you might see some of that in my work or in my re-blogs :)
Point-outs and some little details I love about Del Toro's Frankenstein
The color grading of characters and their emotions. Leopold was black, Claire was red, Victor was black and white, an innocent version of his father. After Claire dies, she literally marks him with her blood, and from this point on, Victor wears some red item of clothing throughout. A cravat worn close to his heart. A scarf to keep the chill away. Gloves to tarnish his actions.
But after Victor loses his leg, and subsequently is perpetually injured, the only red he wears is that of his blood, and that of his son's.
Many more under the cut.
"Father despised us. Our raven hair, dark eyes, and at times... quiet, nervous dispositions." Victor says all these traits about himself that his father loathed... when those were the same traits he ended up giving to the creature, either knowingly or not.
Victor being beaten with a cane as a child, only to end up needing a cane to walk after the ordeals of his life, physically becoming reliant on the cycle of his abuse as a literal crutch to go on. The cane is short-lived though, as he loses it permanently after the creature returns to smite him after he denies him a bride. Whether he likes it or not, his son was the breaking of the generational cycle.
Elaborating on that, the manner in which he lost his leg, running back to save his baby that he selfishly condemned in a fit of jealous rage. This was the turning point for me where I understood this version of Victor Frankenstein. And the fact that the creature never finds out Victor ran to save him, and Victor doesn't tell him; What good is it now to make excuses, after he's already acknowledged he was in the wrong. As unsatisfying as it is for the audience, it's a narratively mature thing to do. But the point being, Victor couldn't break the cycle of abuse at the moment, because he hadn't fully accepted his part in it, and wouldn't until the end, where he bridges the gap between the creature and himself.
The sides of the face and their meanings. There’s also the facial reading theory, that indicates we have two different personalty halves represented by each side of the face. The right side is the business side, the part you show to the world, diligent, hardworking, laborious. The left side is the thought representing one’s inner thoughts and feelings, more personal.
Continuing... Victor’s father marks his right cheek in a fit of disappointment, his mother marks his left just before death. This checks out with this theory of the facial symmetry. The first time Victor cradles the creature’s face, he touches the right side, as his father did for him as a child, only this was gentle, loving. The creature leaned into his touch. The right is the beginning.
Continuing the last point... the eye of Ra vs the eye of Horus in Frankenstein. The Eye of Ra (the right side of the face) is associated with the sun. The eye was used to invoke vengeance and strength, force, power, and passion. The Eye of Horus, (the left side of the face) represented the moon, protection, healing, wholeness. The divine feminine vs the divine masculine, even if both gods being represented were male. The beginning and the end. The creature’s left eye is always dilated and pale, sometimes glowing when shone upon, like a full moon. Like Horus' eye is often depicted. Bro…
Victor's trauma with the right side of his face is shown again when the creature tries to touch him, and he freaks out and yells at him, reverting, in a moment of exhaustion and fear, to his childhood self. A trauma response that angered and confused the creature, as well, not knowing his father's past and pains. And then, in the end, the final touch from the creature's hand is given on the right side of Victor's face. The same he did for Elizabeth. Marking the end of the day and an era.
"There is no after." Harlander's fear of what will come after death. Elizabeth is explicitly Christian, and so does not fear it. She welcomes death as an old friend, able to finally experience the purity she could never find on earth, except in the creature. But Harlander, we don't know. He's an arms merchant, responsible for thousands of deaths. He may not believe in God, anymore. And if he did, what fate would he imagine for himself, if not damnation? Life, in his eyes, is the only way out of punishment.
Milk as a reference for mommy issues. Like Elizabeth, Victor too desires something pure and innocent. To go back to being the child he was forced to abandon. This is why it's so painful when the creature mimics Victor and calls himself by that name, and Victor says "Of course you are! Of course you are." As if he was literally taking the newly born creature to be an almost re-animation of his own childhood self.
Victor always soothing the creature with a touch on the chest, as he had when he'd first listened to his heartbeat and received the embrace. When Victor hugged his mother, he heard the frantic beating of her frightened heart with his left ear. The end. Then he listened to the creature's heart with his right ear, the beginning.
Claire touches Victor's left cheek before her death. De Lacey touches the creature's left cheek before his death.
The telescoping lightning rod resembling both the phallic and the syringe, a procreation and an in-vitro fertilization.
The noises the creature makes, animalistic and feral. I had HOPED beyond hope that he'd sound like an animal sometimes in this movie, and I was NOT disappointed! Growling like a wolf, roaring like a bear, whimpering like a dog, purring like a cat. Like when Victor pets his head at the end, and he leans into it and purrs. Don't tell me you didn't weep. And the fact he canonically likes being petted and hugged. Wonderful boy.
Ozymandias poem mentioned, and how it ties into the themes of time going on. "Time will pass us by." Quote by Harlander earlier on. You can't really separate time from death. Except... for the creature, he can't bring them together. All things fade with time. Flesh rots, plants wither, mountains erode, and rivers change. But he remains, untouched. In Ozymandias, we see the remains of a statue depicting a once great Pharaoh, the stone broken and the body mangled. The plaque reads "Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair." But by the time the traveler reached the statue, there were no works left to look on. The lone and level sands stretched far away, swallowing everything that once stood, except for the plaque. "I am still here."
The father (Victor), the son (Creature), and the Holy Spirit (Elizabeth)
The significance of 9 in the window panes, symbolizing coming full circle, the firmament, and eternity. The 9 paned window in the lab was broken, incomplete, but the 9 paned window on the Horisont was complete. Indicated also by when Victor says "Having reached the end of the world, there was no horizon left." But he later finds just that. The Horisont at the end of the world.
Elizabeth keeping the creatures leaf in her Bible, denoting him as something holy. Something sacred.
Elizabeth's dresses rotating through the color-wheel from blue (William and Harlander's color), to green (her favorite beetles), to yellow (the butterflies), to red (Victor) as she grows closer to the Baron, and then subsequently apart, again. Though she never returns to the blue of her past.
The creature's negative theme being a reference to the score of John Carpenter's "The Thing", with the lone ship in the arctic wasteland reminiscent of outpost 31. Same with the sled dogs, and the wolves, and the incredible violence that befalls the wolves.
Victor closing the ivory woman model as a child, as his ideas gestate. Then opening the model after the construction of he creature, his "pregnancy" fulfilled.
Victor calling out "Sun! Sun!" Upon showing the creature the sunlight for the first time, but the way he's addressing him makes it seem like he's referring to the creature as "son."
Victor referring to himself as the storm cloud as a child, but then taking solace in the sunlight with his baby, extending his arms to show him the glory of the light. The creature attempts to mimic him and bask in the radiance.
Going off this scene, the finale of the film; We hear the "sun" motif play again, for the fourth and final time, as the creature alone basks in the sun, acceptance and his father's blessing writ on his brow.
Deer and mice and animals loving the creature and sensing his gentleness, accepting him despite his size and deformity.
The creature cowering from De Lacey after dropping the brandy bottle, fearful to be struck for such a mistake, despite his knowledge that the blind man was kind and gentle. Much like how Victor reacted when the creature reached for his cheek, a deep-seated trauma response.
The creature touching his old bullet wound as he sees the wolves shot. He feared them, but he also didn't want to see them killed. He's a gentle thing.
Claire and Elizabeth both wearing crucifixes around their neck, marking themselves as explicitly Christian, hence why Victor's disdain for the Lord came about. He saw both of his fathers as failures. Leopold's perpetual disappointment in Victor, and Victor's disappointment in God for allowing his saint of a mother to die. If such devotion could not save her, what good would it do, him?
The almost identical flower relief carving on both Claire's casket, as well as the base of the water tower.
"Aqua Est Vita" Water is life. Water being a recurring motif in the film, filling the Voltaic batteries, running through the creature's cell, the old watermill and river running through the peasants' cottage, the ocean itself that carries the creature to safety, and Victor to the afterlife.
Greek myth, found in Medusa, Venus, Mercury, and the ferry that ushers away the spirits of the dead. The creature pushes Victor on a ship out across the water, acting as the ferryman, yet again. He's the reaper, doomed to forever guide other people to a fate he cannot attain, death's respite. He longs for a companion like himself, not for the novel reasons where he needed someone who wouldn't be afraid of him, but here he needs someone who will persist alongside him through eternity. He deliberately does not ask for Elizabeth, or any human, because he knows that sooner or later, he will see them wither and fade, and as he puts it, he cannot live alone.
Victor beginning his story by saying his father named him Victor, and the name meant nothing because he perpetually lost. But by the end of the story, he realizes it was never meant to indicate a win on his behalf. It was simply a name. To Leopold, Victor meant a disappointment, never the winner, failing to live up to expectations. But to the creature, it meant everything. He had no concept of what the word meant, only that it was the world.
"I will not be punished, nor absolved." The creature realizes he won't receive the tender mercy of Heaven, nor the damnation of hell. He won't get the judgement call. His actions have no greater meaning in his eyes, because he will never receive an absolution. This is why his creator, his "god", Victor, has to assure him that he sees him. That his actions will not go unheeded. That he will be there with him, if only in spirit.
"The tide that brought me here, now comes to take you. Leaving me stranded." Aqua Est Vita, again. Callback to in Victor's lecture when he conflates life and death as two separate processes, guided by different forces. When in reality, it is all the same. A single lifespan, guided by the omnipotent hands of fate and Creator.
Once Victor hears the creature's story, and realizes how he has condemned him, and all that he's suffered through, and will suffer through... he finally realizes that he's not just some animal. He is his baby. He always has been. It took Victor too, extending the olive branch, for the creature to accept it. He had to be the first one to make the move, because he was the first to cause the problem. And the creature accepts it. The softening of some of the rougher aspects of the story, as well as early indications of regret and a desire to mend what was broken, allows the forgiveness narrative to hit home. They never truly hated one another. They were just unable to understand. But once that level ground was established, and accountability was taken, the break was bonded.
Yet by the end of the film, he has come to accept his fate as a lone wanderer, facing the rising sun as he walks toward a new chapter of his life, free from the anger he'd pent up all this time. He is able to live on, with his father's love and blessing in his heart. "Thus the heart will break, yet brokenly live on."
let's talk victor, his red gloves, war and the angel.
note: this post is going to get updated over the weekend (15-16/11/2025), as i want to broaden the st michael symbolism and add the context of victor's mother in relation to the colour red and the motif of creation.
I think the anti-war nature of Del Toro's Frankenstein is more than obvious. I also think the near-constant presence of Victor's leather gloves was a great detail. Aaand I'm quite sure I know the angel from his visions. And I may have a theory on how all those things are connected.
At first, I assumed the gloves' symbolism was obvious: red like blood, but also the constant concealment of Victor's palms as a metaphor for detachment, especially since we know how important hand-to-hand contact is in the movie.
But, given the way GDT draws from the Bible, would it be such a great stretch to bring up another (quite famous) pair of metaphorically bloodied hands?
In Matthew 27:24, Pontius Pilate attempts to argue for Jesus' life and save him from crucifixion despite the rioting crowd. Clearly that doesn’t work lol. He gives in, says, "I am innocent of this man's blood; see to it yourselves", and publicly washes his hands as a symbol of ceremonial cleansing/withdrawal of responsibility. Which is. Extremely ironic, given the fact that it is Pilate that confirms Jesus' death sentence. Even if he tries to deny that. And doesn't Victor, too, attempt to shrug off the responsibility for his creation's suffering from the very start?
But, ah. The colour red. Blood, yes, but also — what was the second Horseman of the Apocalypse's horse? Red. And the Horseman was War.
Once again, this movie fucking hates war!!!!!! It depicts it as pointless, monstrous, loathsome!!!!
And do you know who Victor's angel is? The one from the visions?
I know this man because I have been obsessed with him for ages
Judging by his armour and sword, that is most likely Archangel Michael — the "Warrior" Archangel. The one God created to "be like Him" (his name literally translates to, "Quis ut Deus?" a.k.a. "Who is like God?"), the one whose devotion was so absolute he allegedly battled his own brother and was the leading force behind Lucifer's banishment (carrying out their Father's will).
Archangel Michael is the leading patron saint of war. Literally. Of warfare. Of military. Of policemen. Of violence. There is a reason why he's always depicted armoured and wielding a sword.
And... I don't know, I just think there's something to be said about the fact that the embodiment of Victor's ambition, his haughty dreams, his perfect visions is the saint patron of war, all the while the actual creation, the "failure" he comes to loathe, starts his readings with the Bible, the literal creation of man, and ends on Milton's Paradise Lost, which details the fall of Lucifer.
I think there's something to be said about Victor following the supposed call of the archangel of violence, all the while renouncing the tender-hearted creature that, in the novel, famously tells him, "I ought to be thy Adam, but I am rather the fallen angel (...)."
edit:
i'd also like to include these excellent additions by @anamelessfool @angelsarecomputers @dark-whimsy and @britsgovernmentmh
