words by J.A.G. Mabbutt

To be or not to be? A question often recited and orbited by academics, actors, directors, and creatives across the centuries since Shakespeare first etched it onto parchment. At a distance, we can now agree that Shakespeare’s message or philosophy, first found bound within the confines of Hamlet’s famed speech, was ahead of its time, a literary Moon landing where both existentialism and absurdism crossed paths and from their tryst, found itself pregnant with that almighty question. But does Hamlet answer it? Not really. Sure, he swings from dialectical branch to dialectical branch, weighing up the profits of living against the sanctuary of death, but his answer never truly lands with any satisfaction. I, for one, have often found myself charmed by this speech and its contents, and over the years, found its footprints traced in all manners of art, gravitating to its grim and grave themes. Why? Because Hamlet’s speech doesn’t belong to him, it belongs to every human who has questioned existence. Whether it be Nicolas Poussin’s Baroque painting, Et in Arcadia ego, Hans Holbein’s Danse Macabre or the countless artistic or verbal recitations of Memento mori, the eternal haunting of death itself has found its home in the arts. For the titanic talents of celebrated Mexican auteur Guillermo Del Toro, the question of death is one to be toyed with in his 2025 adaptation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.

In November, I had the pleasure of attending an exhibition for Del Toro’s latest film. An assemblage of eloquent period costumes, props, and historical fragments from the time of Shelley herself, the exhibition was teeming with the living-breathing tissue of Gothic and Romantic revitalisation. I loved it. A day later, I watched Del Toro’s film, anticipating a grandiose spectacle that not only brought to life one of my favourite novels, but also the sublime powers of Del Toro’s monstrous imagination. Was I disappointed? Absolutely not. Was I surprised by it at all? Completely. Now, I know that most readers will be aware of the uproar that has been voiced across the internet by literary purists who, with sharpened tongues and taloned fingertips, found issue with the artistic liberties exercised by Del Toro in his adaptation. Like the criticism conjured by those who lambasted the trailer of Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights adaptation, these critics picked apart the many differences and rifts that existed between the adaptation and the source material itself. But, in my humble opinion, who cares? Del Toro’s film succeeds because it wants to uplift the DNA of Shelley’s ideas, rather than blindly produce another clone of the novel’s original narrative. Sometimes art isn’t there to repeat, but instead to reimagine and repurpose, and Del Toro’s film does this.

For a film that is so fixated on conception - in both immaculate and scientific senses - it is undoubtedly a work that, like Hamlet’s speech, is handled with an existential ideation. Rather than being pieced together solely with a Promethean focus, the film is rooted in Gothic and Romantic ideas, a seedling of the same origins that inspired the works of Shelley’s peers. Whereas the relationship between Victor Frankenstein (Oscar Isaac) and his Creature (Jacob Elordi) is rife with acknowledgements of generational trauma and absentee parenting, their dyadic dynamic additionally brings to life profound questions about the nature of being. For the Creature, existence isn’t celebrated like for most sentient beings; his conception is artificial, and his creator is indifferent to his existence. Like with most newborns, the nature of existence isn’t explained, but unlike most newborns, the Creature’s capacity to learn and navigate the world means that his exposure to its dangers and aspects is accelerated. We learn throughout the film that with his reanimation, the Creature was gifted the ability to regenerate and rapidly heal from otherwise fatal wounds. To put it plainly, he cannot die. For Hamlet, this is not an issue. Instead, for Hamlet, it is the ease of death that permits him to question it. The Creature is denied this questioning, simply because his existence cannot be altered; instead, he is offered a state of being that is imposed upon him without permission or explanation. Hamlet’s ability to ask the question and to be capable of exploring its options is enviable for the Creature. The burden of immortality, or as the Creature glumly voices, “I cannot die, and I cannot live alone,” invites us to sympathise with him and recognise that the Creature exists in some ways as a foil to Hamlet’s dilemma. In his speech, Hamlet accepts that death is as easy as “sleep,” and therefore an act that is easy to perform. He can die. He can live in the company of others because he, unlike the Creature, is aesthetically accepted into society at large. 

Hamlet, later in the play, gestures with the skull of Yorick in his palm, a figurative vanitas or memento mori, whereupon he witnesses the reality of death, not simply an idea. Del Toro mirrors this when, upon his escape from his confines, the Creature, skull in hand, is puzzled by that which he holds. For the Creature, the skull is an uncanny object that is familiar, yet strange. However, for Hamlet, it is the closest thing to an answer he might discover in response to his earlier question. Del Toro plagues us with this image of the skull, not simply as a device or prop, but in Harlander’s (Christoph Waltz) study, where the vanitas he paints is a reflection of his own thanatophobia and his inability to accept his own fate at the hands of the syphilis he has contracted. To mere mortals like Harlander or Hamlet, the iconography of death is a reminder of that which plagues them: what is it like to be dead? To the Creature, this iconography is instead a reminder of his origins, of being born from death unto life, unlike those that feebly search for ways to avoid the inevitability of death.

At an extraordinarily early point in his existence, the Creature learns what other newborns do not: that death isn’t selective, nor fair. When the Creature is made to witness up close the death of an innocent deer by a hunter, the predatory habits of wolves upon sheep, and even the brutal passing of a blind old man who befriended him and treated him with kindness, his exposure to the harshness of life and the relentlessness of death educates him without sincerity or solution. Upon seeing conflict between the wolves and huntsmen, the Creature comments upon the didactic poignancy of the event, and therefore the revelation that “The hunter did not hate the wolf. The wolf did not hate the sheep. But violence felt inevitable between them. Perhaps, I thought, this was the way of the world. It would hunt you and kill you just for being who you are.” Hamlet’s own speech mirrors this, as the Prince recognises a truth about the violence of life, in comparison to the seeming comfort of death: “the thousand natural shocks / that flesh is heir to”. Like Hamlet, the Creature views life as something inherently unfair and, therefore, equal to suffering. In his inclusion of this realisation, Del Toro invites the audience to witness the erasure of the Creature’s innocence, and in its place, the genesis of a brutal worldview that positions social Darwinism in the frame.

Like his creation, Victor, too, is allowed an opportunity to regale the audience with his tale, and therefore, the genesis of his own dark worldview. He reflects on the passing of his mother, the abuses of his father, and the drive that, from a young age, he developed to combat the powers of death. For Victor, his mother’s death is catalytic, a fuel that helps foster his creative urges to assemble life from death itself, and in doing so, assume deification without divinity. Del Toro’s invaluable use of colour and costume helps paint Victor’s obsession with death and indissoluble grief into every stage of the film. His mother (Mia Goth) and her crimson-red dresses echo throughout the film, and the symbolism of this colouration can be seen as a metaphor for violence or blood; however, there is more to it than that. Victor, as an adult, is seen to wear red gloves or a red neckerchief in a majority of scenes, and through this, Del Toro highlights Victor’s mother’s legacy as something that stains Victor throughout his life. This prominent, unmoving grief that Victor is stricken with motivates his aim to create life, not as an attempt to resurrect his mother, but instead as an affront to death itself, to conquer it and prove himself better than God and his own surgeon father. Victor’s egotistical drive sacrifices his willingness to be responsible for his creation because ultimately the act itself is selfish and interested only in the creation of life, not the life itself. A striking moment in the film is when Victor, while sourcing the body parts for his experiments, shows little care for the soon-to-be executed criminals or the frozen dead in Crimea. Victor isn’t at any point fixated on preventing death as a moral problem or saving lives from avoidable concerns, but instead on being able to reverse death. Rather than seeing death as a crime against humanity as a whole, Victor sees death as a personal opponent that has led to personal strife. Hamlet’s relationship with death is also magnified by personal loss and grief as a response. The play’s opening, where Hamlet is hectored by the ghostly apparition of his father, helps motivate Hamlet’s campaign against his uncle Claudius, and therefore helps unravel Hamlet’s mental state. Arguably, his famed speech is not solely brought to life by Hamlet’s own dissatisfaction with life, but more so by his being taken hostage by grief, an emotion that amplifies his existential contemplation. In this way, Hamlet’s meditation on death “To die, to sleep  / To sleep, perchance to dream—ay, there’s the rub” reveals a grief-bound hesitation, a philosophical paralysis in the face of mortality. Victor Frankenstein, by contrast, transforms grief into action, declaring “In seeking life, I created death,” and turning death into a challenge to be mastered. Where Hamlet pauses to question the moral and existential weight of existence, Victor acts to defy it, making mortality a personal adversary rather than an inevitable fate. This contrast underscores how grief shapes each character: for Hamlet, it invites reflection; for Victor, it drives obsession. In confronting death so radically, Victor not only challenges the natural order but also exposes the tragic consequences of attempting to redefine existence itself.

In retrospect, the original novel strikes me differently now, especially against the backdrop of controversy surrounding Del Toro’s choice to close his film with a Byronic line: “The heart will break, and yet brokenly live on.” Some critics found this ill-fitting, given that Byron was not Shelley’s co-author. Yet these words resonate with an honesty that transcends literary proprietorship. They capture the tenacity of grief, its ability not only to wound but to inhabit us, to become a quiet organ beating beneath our daily performances. In both Del Toro’s film and Hamlet’s soliloquy, death is not a curtain call but a companion, shaping thought, action, and the fragile negotiations we make with our own beings. What Del Toro understands, and what Shakespeare intuited centuries before him, is that mortality is neither solely a terror nor a release, but a condition that binds all sentient life, stitched into our fears as much as our desires. To confront death is, inevitably, to confront life, its cruelty, its beauty, and its refusal to offer simple answers. And perhaps that is why these works endure: not because they solve the riddle of existence, but because they dare to articulate its irresolution. In reminding us that the heart breaks and still goes on, they affirm the paradox that defines us all, that to be human is to suffer, to question, and nonetheless to persist.