Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein Essay

Shelley wanted the audience in this scene to feel greater sympathy for the monster as he is turned away yet again by mankind because he is simply judged too quickly because of his appearance. Branagh remains true to Shelley’s intentions in this scene by making the monster appear heartbroken. Cries echo through the forest, he runs with a limp through the forest away from the house and collapses on the ground as soon as he thinks he is out of sight from the family. These things were very good for building up sympathy for the monster. This scene is also where we see the monster beginning to change. He goes back to the house and sees that the family have fled their home, this makes the monster so angry and upset that he sets fire to the cottage and swears that he will have revenge on the man who made him, so he reads the journal left in his jacket and goes to Geneva to get his revenge on Frankenstein. Branagh made this part of his film very dramatic by using very fast powerful music against the roaring of flames and black smoke that engulfed the cottage and the monster stood in front of the cottage looking fiercely at the flames with a look of anger in his eyes. This is good because it shows that the emotions and feelings which the monster has been hiding are all being forced out of him because he is determined to find answers to all the questions he has about his life and this is exactly how Shelley intended this scene to look as the monster suddenly realises his purpose of life is an experiment. When the monster kills William and sets up Justine Branagh managed to plan this very well because Shelley wanted the monster to kill the little brother and also be able to plant it on Justine without losing sympathy from the audience for the monster and Branagh is able to do this by not actually showing the monster killing William. In the next scene the monster and Frankenstein meet in the mountains, the monster has his chance to get his answers from the man who made him. The monster comes across as being very certain of his knowledge and his feelings. This appears to scare Frankenstein because he doesn’t actually know why he did something so evil and didn’t realise the greatness of the pain he had caused. Shelley wanted this conversation between the monster and Frankenstein to make the audience judge the monster as the ‘good guy’ and Frankenstein as the ‘bad guy. ‘ Branagh does this by making the monster talk and ask a lot more questions than Frankenstein. Frankenstein has a look of shock on his face throughout the conversation but the monster looks very certain and meaningful of everything he says to Victor, again making the monster seem superior to Frankenstein. Shelley wanted the audience to feel that the monster only did certain evil things because he was given emotions and senses but not shown how to use them and Branagh fits that into the film by the monster asking Victor Why he made him and brought him into the world to live and so very quickly and then left him to die. Shelley believed that no child should be bought into the world without being loved by parents; Branagh shows this belief of Shelley’s by building up a father and son relationship and shows the father-like character abandoning an innocent child-like character. The monster asks one thing of Frankenstein and that is to have a bride that will look as ‘ugly’ as him so that she would accept him for whom he is and vows that they will never be seen again. This again shows the maturity and sense of the monster. Frankenstein grants him this and promises he will have his bride. Frankenstein doesn’t keep his promise and returns home to marry his bride and travel away with armed men on their wedding night so they will have protection if the monster does come to kill them which he promised he would if he did not get his bride. It is a dark and stormy night and raining very heavily which makes it very hard to see through the dark night, Frankenstein goes outside because he thinks he hears the monsters pipe playing and leaves Elizabeth on her own, quiet slow music start to play but it starts to get faster and louder which says to the viewer that the monster is close by, which he is because he climbs through the window and punches Elizabeth in the chest and pulls her heart out, spraying blood everywhere making a very gruesome sound and very nasty to look at. Frankenstein refuses to accept the death of his new bride so he takes her back to his laboratory and starts cutting up Justine’s body and stitching parts of her and Elizabeth together and revives her so once again we see all the gory bits of limbs being cut up and sewn together, as Elizabeth awakens she realises what Victor has done to her as the monster comes into the laboratory and mistakes her for his bride which victor had promised her, she becomes so angry and upset with the fact that she has been part of Victor ‘playing God’ she sets herself on fire and runs through the house alighting everything. This scene is again highly over exaggerated, as it is very gory and horrifically unnecessary to the viewer. As Walton and his crew come to burn Frankenstein’s body the monster emerges from the distance and is offered by Walton to come with them, this being his first offering of acceptance to mankind, the monster says â€Å"he was my father† and decides to set himself alight upon Frankenstein’s body so that they burnt together. I think Branagh managed to remain true to most of Shelley’s intentions of ‘Frankenstein’ by portraying the monsters character as a very innocent, childlike character linking it all in very well with Shelley’s beliefs she had before and whilst writing ‘Frankenstein’. Branagh definitely pandered to the accepted stereotype of the horror genre by showing a lot of close-ups of quite disturbing images and very horrific noises that went with the images that a book can’t do. Branagh also used a very wide range of music that managed to fit into all the horrific parts of his film very well. Charlotte Tufnell 10M Show preview only The above preview is unformatted text This student written piece of work is one of many that can be found in our GCSE Mary Shelley section.