摘要：当弗兰肯斯坦的怪物拥有Instagram男神般的俊美外表，当造物主的故事被解读为“直升机父母”的失职……吉尔莫·德尔·托罗的新版《弗兰肯斯坦》远不止是一次经典重述。影片以华丽视觉包裹，直指当代核心焦虑：从扭曲的父职到科技巨头对永生的痴迷。这不再是你父辈的恐怖故

有趣灵魂说

译文为原创，仅供个人学习使用

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A comely “Frankenstein” for the Instagram age

适合Instagram时代的俊美"弗兰肯斯坦"

In Guillermo del Toro’s film, everything—including the monster—looks gorgeous

在吉尔莫·德尔·托罗的电影中，一切看起来都华丽无比——包括怪物

他有着水汪汪的眼睛、飘逸的头发、黄色的皮肤和黑色的嘴唇。他身高八英尺。玛丽·雪莱少女时期在《弗兰肯斯坦》中构想出的生物被描绘得栩栩如生。但是，对于电影制作人来说，他也是一个诱人的轮廓。她希望这个故事能够"诉说我们天性中神秘的恐惧"，它提供了一系列强大的主题：上帝与科学、先天与后天、忽视与过失、命运与自由意志。导演们挑选并混合这些色调，为他们所处的时代打造一个怪物。

最新让他复活的是吉尔莫·德尔·托罗，他的《弗兰肯斯坦》现已登陆影院，并将于11月7日在Netflix上线。在这个怪物无数次登上银幕的经历中，他呈现出你能想象到的各种形象，外加一些你很可能想象不到的形象。他曾与西部片、太空冒险片、恶搞片、音乐片以及（像许多新技术一样）色情片杂交；他催生了像《可怜的东西》这样的高雅变奏，也催生了像《古怪科学》这样的通俗作品。即便如此，德尔·托罗先生对这个神话故事的着色依然是独特而意味深长的。

它看起来华丽无比。电影的时间设定在原书出版几十年后的19世纪中期，是一场拜伦式发型和天鹅绒礼服大衣的盛宴。对雪莱的框架叙事结构稍作调整后，维克多·弗兰肯斯坦（由奥斯卡·伊萨克饰演）向一位从极地冰原救起他的丹麦船长讲述了他那耸人听闻的历史。他在一座哥特式塔楼里组装他的人造人，镜头血腥地停留在他处理眼球、骨锯和剥开的皮肤的精湛技艺上。

这部《弗兰肯斯坦》本身似乎部分是由电影碎片组成的。主角像《回到未来》那样驾驭闪电。遭到造物主憎恶、躲藏在谷仓里的怪物（由雅各布·艾洛蒂饰演，见图）像一位魁梧的白雪公主一样与一些老鼠交上了朋友。他像兰博一样横冲直撞，殴打人群以及（不知何故）狼群。医生和怪物一起出现在镜子中，这是向首个银幕改编版——托马斯·爱迪生1910年的默片版本——中的一个镜头致敬。

但这部影片也有新颖之处。它异乎寻常地关注弗兰肯斯坦实验的经费——以及身体部件——从何而来。一位军火商资助了这些实验；尸体则取自绞刑架和战场。这是一部具有现代良知的奇幻故事，嵌入了更广泛的死亡经济之中。

至于那些搜刮来的部件的总和：无论在道德上还是生理上，他都远没有雪莱笔下那可怕的原创形象以及他的许多银幕前辈那么丑陋。在小说中，他谋杀了弗兰肯斯坦的弟弟、未婚妻和最好的朋友。而在这里，他手上的血大多属于群众演员。与1931年鲍里斯·卡洛夫扮演的那个脖子上带螺栓的食尸鬼相比，他是一个长相粗犷的帅哥，拥有轮廓分明的体格和俊美的额头；一个适合Instagram时代的、注重外形的怪物。

也适合 直升机式育儿（helicopter parenting） 的时代。在那些丰富的主题中，德尔·托罗先生强调的是父性。在原著中，弗兰肯斯坦的父亲是慈爱的，而在这里，他却是疏远而严厉的。起初，医生本人对他自己奇迹般的创造物欣喜若狂，但由于失眠和疲惫，他很快变得暴躁而残忍——既是一个不负责任的父亲，也是一个自身难保的父亲。看在老天的份上，你最终会想，给他的造物找个心理医生吧。

有趣灵魂注：

与此同时，弗兰肯斯坦的根本使命也发生了转变。在书中，他主要、狂妄的目的是发现"长生不老药"。在新电影中，他也想这样做，但他的最终目标却落在了生命周期的另一端：利用他杀不死的创造物来"征服死亡"。在这一点上，他与其说像往昔的巫师，不如说更像当今追求永生的亿万富翁和科学家。

因此，德尔·托罗先生的《弗兰肯斯坦》是一部非常当代的作品。然而，毫无疑问还会有更多的重塑版本即将到来（从明年上映的《新娘！》开始，玛吉·吉伦哈尔将故事背景搬到了1930年代的芝加哥）。科学本身也亟待重启。毕竟，创造生命的探索不再局限于像弗兰肯斯坦那样依赖有机组织和细胞的实验室。如今，希望和令人不安的恐惧都聚焦于人工智能（AI）。在最黑暗的预言中，人工智能将在一种自我延续的循环中增强自身，从而使人类过时。

在小说中，弗兰肯斯坦和他的怪物有很多共同点：痴迷、渴望复仇、渴望被遗忘以及灼人的孤独。也许在雪莱这部不朽寓言未来的某个版本中，他们可能还会分享别的东西。在一个真正尖端的演绎里，怪物将不是一具披着血肉之躯的人形框架，而是一个由芯片构成的人工智能模型。医生亦然。■

He has watery eyes, flowing hair, yellow skin and black lips. He is eight feet tall. The creature dreamed up by a teenage Mary Shelley in “Frankenstein”is vividly corporeal. But, for film-makers, he is also an inviting outline. The story she hoped would “speak to the mysterious fears of our nature” offers a palette of mighty themes: God and science, nature and nurture, neglect and delinquency, fate and free will. Directors pick and mix these shades to craft a monster for their times.

The latest to resurrect him is Guillermo del Toro, whose “Frankenstein” is out in cinemas now and on Netflix on November 7th. In his umpteen screen outings, the creature has appeared in every guise you can imagine, plus some you probably can’t. He has been crossbred with Westerns, space adventures, spoofs, musicals and (like many new technologies) erotica; he has spawned highbrow riffs such as “Poor Things” and lower-brow ones like “Weird Science”. Even so, Mr del Toro’s colouring of the mythic yarn is distinctive and telling.

It looks gorgeous. Unfolding in the mid-19th century, decades after the book was published, the movie is a carnival of Byronichairdos and velvet frock-coats. In a tweak to Shelley’s framing device, Victor Frankenstein (played by Oscar Isaac) recounts his lurid history to a Danish sea captain who rescues him from the polar ice. He assembles his humanoid in a gothic tower, the camera lingering gorily on his skill with eyeballs, bone saws and retracted skin.

This “Frankenstein” itself seems partly made up of cinema scraps. The protagonist harnesses lightning à la “Back to the Future”. Reviled by his maker and holed up in a barn, the creature (Jacob Elordi, pictured) befriends some rats like a hulking Snow White. He biffs people and (for some reason) wolves on Ramboesque rampages. Doctor and monster appear together in a mirror, a nod to a shot in the first screen adaptation, Thomas Edison’s silent version of 1910.

But this one has fresh touches too. It is unusually interested in where the funding—and body parts—for Frankenstein’s experiments come from. An arms dealer bankrolls them; the cadavers are harvested from hangings and battlefields. This is a fantasy with a modern conscience, embedded in a wider economy of death.

As for the sum of those scavenged parts: both morally and physically, he is much less hideous than Shelley’s ghastly original and many of his film predecessors. In the novel he murders Frankenstein’s brother, fiancée and best friend. Here the blood on his hands mostly belongs to extras. Compared with Boris Karloff’s neck-bolted ghoul from 1931, he is a dishy bit of rough, with a chiselled physique and comely brow; a body-conscious monster for the Instagram age.

And for the era of helicopter parenting. For of those abundant themes, Mr del Toro emphasises fatherhood. Whereas in the text Frankenstein’s father is loving, here he is distant and harsh. At first the doctor himself is enraptured by his own miraculous progeny, but, sleepless and frazzled, he is soon cranky and cruel—a deadbeat dad as well as a dead-meat dad. For heaven’s sake, you wind up thinking, get his creature a therapist.

Meanwhile there is a shift in Frankenstein’s underlying mission. In the book his main, hubristic aim is to discover “the elixir of life”. He wants to do that in the new film too, but his ultimate goal is at the other end of the life cycle: to use his unkillable creation to “conquer death”. In this he resembles less the necromancers of yore than the billionaires and scientists pursuing immortality today.

So Mr del Toro’s is a very contemporary “Frankenstein”. Yet there are doubtless many more revamps to come (starting with “The Bride!”, out next year, in which Maggie Gyllenhaal moves the action to Chicago in the 1930s). The science itself is due for a reboot. After all, the quest to engender life is no longer confined to laboratories which, like Frankenstein’s, run on organic tissue and cells. These days hopes and squeamish fears focus on artificial intelligence (AI). In the darkest prophecies, AI will enhance itself in a self-perpetuating cycle that renders humans obsolete.

In the novel, Frankenstein and his monster have a lot in common: obsession, a hunger for revenge, a longing for oblivion and searing loneliness. Perhaps in a future iteration of Shelley’s deathless fable, they may share something else. In a truly cutting-edge take, the creature would not be a human frame clad in flesh and blood but an AI model made of chips. So would the doctor. ■

来源：左右图史