Guillermo Del Toro would ‘rather die’ than use generative AI

This message comes from Alexa.

The all-new Alexa Plus will do more so you don't have to.

Chat naturally while Alexa learns your style,

anticipates what's next and makes it happen.

Free with Prime on your Amazon devices.

More at Amazon.com slash Alexa Plus.

This is Fresh Air, I'm David B. and Cooley.

Guillermo del Toro's film Frankenstein is nominated for nine Academy Awards,

including Best Picture, Supporting Actor, Cinematography,

Original Score, and Adapted Screenplay.

Del Toro wrote and directed this new reimagining of Frankenstein,

which takes inspiration from the 1931 film Frankenstein,

one of the most enduring horror monster films,

and from Mary Shelley's 1818 novel Frankenstein.

In Del Toro's movie, the final part of the story is told from the creature's point of view.

Here's a clip from it, in which the creature,

played by Oscar nominee Jacob Allority,

is shot and left for dead by hunters.

There was silence again,

and then,

merciless life.

How long did I die for?

I do not know, but I saw my injuries healed.

The cold winter air stung in my lungs.

I felt lonelyer than ever,

because for every man there was but one remedy to all pain.

Death, a gift you too had denied me.

Some of the themes of Del Toro's new film,

echo themes with which he's been obsessed for years.

Misunderstood creatures,

men who behave like monsters,

father-son relationships,

religion,

empathy,

cruelty,

misguided scientific experiments that take a terrible turn.

Also, what Del Toro describes as the uneasy truce between science and religion,

machine and man,

and the realization that you are inescapably alone.

His other movies include Pan's Labyrinth,

The Shape of Water,

which won four Oscars,

including Best Picture and Best Director,

Nightmare Alley,

A Reimagining of Pinocchio filmed in Stop Motion Animation,

and two Hellboy films.

A significant event in Del Toro's life

was the kidnapping of his father in Mexico.

After Del Toro helped raise a million dollar ransom,

his father was released.

In Del Toro's Frankenstein,

Oscar Isaac plays Dr. Victor Frankenstein,

the surgeon who wants to create new life,

a new man built out of body parts from the newly dead.

The creature he makes is played by Jacob Allority,

who's best known for co-starring in Euphoria,

and who also played Elvis Presley in the movie Priscilla.

His newest role is as Heathcliff,

opposite Margot Robbie as Kathy,

in the new movie version of Wuthering Heights.

Del Toro grew up in Guadalajara, Mexico,

and has been living in LA since the late 90s.

Guillermo Del Toro, welcome to Fresh Air.

Congratulations on your new film,

which brings together so much of your other work.

And I know it's a dream come true for you

to do your own version of Frankenstein.

You first saw the movie, the 1931 movie,

which is totally different from the book and your new movie,

but that movie really had a hold on you.

Tell us why it had such meaning for you.

Well, it was curiously enough on a Sunday

after Catholic Mass.

We came back home, and then we would watch horror movies

when Channel 6, all day.

And it was the first time I saw Frankenstein,

and the moment Boris Cardiff crossed the threshold,

I had an epiphany.

I had a St. Paul on the road to the Mascus kind of experience.

I realized I understood my faith or my dogmas,

better through Frankenstein than through Sunday Mass.

I saw the resurrection of the flesh,

the immaculate conception, ecstasy,

you know, stigmata, everything made sense,

and I decided at age 7 that the creature of Frankenstein

was going to be my personal avatar and my personal Messiah.

It was a really profound transformation,

and it made an impression that lasted my whole life.

There's three parts of the movie.

There's the introduction, then there's the story told pretty much

from Dr. Frankenstein's point of view,

and then the final part is told from the creature's point of view.

I really wanted to read Mary Shelley's novel,

which I've never read before speaking to you again,

and I wasn't able to find the time to do it.

Yes.

I did, however, read your introduction to, like,

I think it's a 2021 anototid version of your novel.

But anyways, in Mary Shelley's original telling of the story,

is there a chapter that's from the creature's point of view,

or is that just something you wanted to do?

No, no, no, there are so many things that are in the novel.

You know, that is one of them.

When the creature meets Victor in the frozen north,

he says, well, this is what happened to me,

and he proceeds to tell him his itinerary

of degradation and humanization,

and learning the language with the family of the hermit.

You know, all of that is in the novel,

but it's been rarely articulated.

And I found that hinging the movie in the middle

was structurally the best way to make the audience

almost get a jolt and say, oh, I've never seen this before.

Even if it's been dramatized briefly in other versions,

this is the one that tracks the creature in a distinct chapter.

It starts in the frozen north and is very discreet in color.

Then you have childhood and a young age of Victor,

which is idealized and very heightened visually

by the fact that Victor is telling the story,

and then the fairy tale, like...

I am glad you said fairy tale, because it seems,

that seems to me like the part from Dr. Frankenstein's point of view

has elements of horror film and monster film,

but the second part, it's set in the woods.

It's like a fairy tale.

A little cabin.

Yeah, and the old blind man,

it's kind of a very fairy tale,

benevolent character.

There are spirits in the woods.

And then the creature is guided by all sorts of animals

in understanding the world.

Yeah, and the blind old hermit thinks

that because he can't see, he doesn't see the monster

that other people see.

And in fact, he thinks the creature is the spirit of the woods.

Yes, that was very important to me

that the three chapters were very distinct in style,

and very distinct in energy.

The camera work is very different.

The color palette is very different.

And I think that I would say,

having seen most every version of Frankenstein on film,

this is very unique.

The scale of the movie, both being epic and intimate,

is very unique, but the fairy tale breath of it all

and the parable, it feels like a parable

of the prodigal father, I'd say jokingly.

Are you trying to interpret Frankenstein?

People always call them monster Frankenstein.

Yeah, that's a mistake that came from a play.

Yeah, so are you trying to compare the creature

in Frankenstein to Jesus?

I think the parables are very, very curious.

I triangulate the creature with Jesus and Pinocchio.

Yeah, in your version of Pinocchio,

and I don't know if this is in other stories

or in the original fairy tale,

Gepetto, who creates the puppet,

Pinocchio, also has built or carved, I should say,

a huge depiction of Jesus being crucified and for the church.

That's completely original to...

That's original?

Yes. To me, the myths are very related.

The two biggest mysteries in the Bible for me growing up,

and I am a laps Catholic, but the two mysteries were the book of Job

in which man questions God, why the bad things happen to good people

and the answer, basically, of God, is why not?

You know, I say...

It's very comforting the way you put it.

Well, that's the way God put it.

He says, who are you to question my wisdom?

You were not there when I created the world, basically.

When we talked a few years ago,

you mentioned that your grandmother, who was very Catholic,

exercised you, not exercised, but as an exorcism.

She exercised you twice.

Yeah, we had a holy water, yeah.

Did you feel like people saw you as

unholy and a sacrilege in the same way that people see the creature in Frankenstein?

And even Pinocchio, when Pinocchio was kind of rowdy in church,

because he's never been there before, he doesn't understand what church is,

the people in the church call him unholy and a sacrilege.

Well, you know, I'm very used to not fitting.

I'm always looking through the window into the world, you know,

a little bit with a set of thoughts and a set of principles and ideas that don't necessarily conform.

So my grandmother was in great pain that I would draw monsters all day.

I would talk about the Bible asking questions that were maybe too poignant.

But we love each other and that is salient in my movies, no matter how different we were,

we can love each other and that is again in Frankenstein.

There's Frankenstein in all my movies.

From Chronos all the way to Pinocchio, every single movie I hesitate to think of one

that doesn't have elements of it.

You could say in some ways that the creature in Frankenstein is like artificial intelligence,

because he's created by man, but then lives on its own and can destroy man, if,

you know, without even understanding quite what he's doing.

So what are your thoughts about AI and did that kind of inform the movie in any way?

It didn't, it didn't. It didn't, in the sense that my concern is not artificial intelligence,

but natural stupidity. I think that's what drives most of the world's worst teachers.

But I did want it to have the arrogance of Victor be similar in some ways to the tech bros.

You know, he's kind of lined creating something without considering the consequences.

You know, and I think we have to take a pause and and consider where we're going.

If you have to teach an AI to think in ones and zeros, you know, oh my god, I would love

for a generation to get racing kids right one time, one time. In the entire history of mankind,

there hasn't been a single generation that was raised right all across the globe.

And I think that's our biggest failure in a way, you know.

Once and zeros don't get the alchemy that you get with emotion and experience,

you get the information, but you don't get the alchemy of emotion, spirituality, and feeling.

I'm not saying it's impossible to replicate, but we have it readily available

with the next generation of children. And that's why the painful thing, and Jacob and Lordy and

Victor and Agd is a father and son relationship that is very relatable in the film,

very relatable and very moving by the end. Did you take advantage of any AI in making

Frankenstein? AI, particularly generative AI, is I am not interested, nor will I ever be interested,

and I'm 61, and I hope to be able to remain uninterested in using it at all until I croak.

I really don't. And the other day somebody wrote me an email and said,

what is your stance on AI? My answer was very short. I said, I'd rather die.

Oh, those are strong words. Man, not for me, I'm Mexican. I think, but I think very that,

even when a human sings a song that has already been recorded six, seven times,

they're filtering their experience, their life. I often think of, you know, Johnny Cash singing

Hurt, the trend resonance song, and making it entirely his own, or Joe Cocker singing the Beatles.

You know, that does not have a version. That's not remixing. That is filtering through

alchemical pain and experience and work of art into making it your own.

The creature in Frankenstein is endowed with eternal life in your film.

That starts going to ask you, what do you think about, you know, his eternal life is hell.

The creature is alone and he wants to end his torment in life, but he can't.

There's no one in the world who's like him, and Dr. Frankenstein refuses to make a companion for him.

And the creature says, there was only one remedy for pain, death, and you took that away from me too.

After the creature survived something that other people assumed would have killed him, he says,

there was silence and then merciless life, I felt lonelier than ever.

So when you think of eternal life, do you think that that's torment?

Oh, I do. I'm a huge fan of death. I'm a groupie for death. I think it's the metronome of our

existence, and without rhythm, there is no melody, you know. It is the metronome of a death that

makes us value the compass of the beautiful music, you know. I'm going to say this comes when

my father was taken, every day was torment, and I used to see the sun rising and recented.

And I said, the sun doesn't care about my pain, but then eventually I realized it was my pain

that didn't care about the sun, and that I needed to change that, that I needed to accept it.

I needed to understand that the rhythm of the cosmos is different, and that of my little heart,

you know. You mentioned the fear of death every day that your father was held hostage,

kidnapped for ransom. Of course, you'd be worried about death then. It was at the threat of death

hanging over him, and his life was in your hands to save. Putting that aside as major as that is,

did you have a fear of death growing up and as a young man? Yes, as a young man,

my grandmother and I had a very precarious sense of death and life, my grandmother would say,

good night to me every day and say, let us pray that I'm here tomorrow. And that is very,

that is pretty intense for a four or five year old to hear. And I would spend, sometimes I would

sleep at the foot of her bed, and I would be listening in the dark for her breathing. And if the

breathing sees deeper for two seconds, I would be jolted and take a look to see if she was okay.

And that stayed with me for many decades. I don't fear it anymore. I don't fear that anymore.

I feel losing people, yes, but me, I'm not afraid of dying, I hope. You know, really,

Terry, all these great questions, you know, when they get resolved, right when the lights flutter,

and you are no longer a director or a general or a pope, right when you become just you,

and the lights are flickering out, that's when you realize what you did or didn't do in your life.

And that's the most momentous thing anyone can experience. And you can go with great agitation or

great peace. We were talking earlier about the book of Job. Yes. You asked your cast to read

the book of Job. Yes, and the Tao. What did you want them to take from it? Because ultimately,

that's the plea of the creature too. The plea of the creature is why, you know, why do this thing

happen to me? And the answer comes at the end. The final image of the film is what tells you

what we can do. I mean, acceptance is so profound. You know, we are building a culture in

which we have the idea of what things should be. And when they don't happen, you can feel frustrated

rebel against them. But at the end of the day, they are what they are. Marty Scorsese

tackled the same sort of question in the Irishman. And the answer is very, very beautifully. He says,

it is what it is. You know, that's the book of Job. It is what it is. The Tao says,

all pain comes from desire, which is absolutely true. You want more awards, you want more money,

you find yourself in pain. I do. You know, but if you don't, if you don't want more,

there's a zero that gives you peace on the same with life. So you found feeling insignificant.

All great. Liberating. Liberating, which can happen with reviews.

You read them? Not anymore. Not anymore. I'm 61, I don't. But I did. I did, oh my God.

When I was young, I would read every single one until I found the one that would never leave my

brain. I remember a few that are really well phrased. Do you want to quote one? Well, Jay

Hoverman of the village voice wrote a great, he put down Blade 2 beautifully. He said,

the only thing remotely scary about Blade 2 is that he's done by the same man that did

Devil's backbone, which is beautiful.

Filmmaker Guillermo del Toro, speaking with Terry Gross last October, he wrote and directed the film

Frankenstein, which has been nominated for nine Academy Awards, including Best Picture,

Best Supporting Actor, Original Score, Production Design, Sound, and Adapted Screenplay.

More after a break, I'm David B. and Cooley, and this is Fresh Air.

This message comes from LinkedIn ads. One of the hardest parts about B2B marketing is

reaching the right audience. That's why you need LinkedIn ads. You can target your buyers by job

title, company, role, seniority, and skills. All the professionals you need to reach in one place.

Get a $250 credit on your next campaign so you can try it yourself. Just go to LinkedIn.com slash

NPR pod. That's LinkedIn.com slash NPR POD. Terms and conditions apply only on LinkedIn ads.

Support for this podcast and the following message come from Alexa. Say hello to the all new Alexa

Plus. Need last minute concert tickets? Craving your favorite restaurant? Just sit back, relax,

and talk naturally. Alexa's on it. Alexa remembers what you love, anticipates what you need, and makes

it all happen. Alexa Plus brings thousands of possibilities to life, ready whenever inspiration strikes.

And now Alexa Plus is free with prime on your Amazon devices like Echo and Fire TV. Amazon.com

slash Alexa Plus. Support comes from our 2025 lead sponsor of Fresh Air Viking,

committed to exploring the world in comfort journey through the heart of Europe on an

elegant Viking longship with thoughtful service, destination focused dining, and cultural

enrichment on board and on shore. And every Viking voyage is all inclusive with no children

and no casinos. Discover more at Viking.com. Let's get back to Terry's interview with

filmmaker Guillermo del Toro. He wrote and directed the film Frankenstein, a new interpretation of

the story inspired by Mary Shelley's 1818 novel. The film has been nominated for nine academy awards,

including Best Picture, Best Cinematography, Best Costumes, Best Original Score,

Adapted Screenplay, and Best Supporting Actor. Here's a clip from the film in which Dr. Victor

Frankenstein, played by Oscar Isaac, is addressing academics about his quest to create new life

in a new man built out of body parts from the newly dead. Life. This is life, gentlemen.

We are born. And no sooner do we rise, we fall. Death. And in the space between that rise and fall,

our humble little third year. Now, birth is not in our hands. Is it? Conception, that spark,

the animation, thought, and soul. That isn't God's hands. God. But death. Now, there lies the

challenge. That should be our concern. It should be. Who are we to do so? We are not gods. Are we?

But if we are to behave as immodestly as gods, we must at the very least deliver miracles.

Wouldn't you say? Ignite divine spark in these young students' minds. Teach them defiance,

rather than obedience, show that man may pursue nature to her hiding places and stop death,

not slow it down, but stop it entirely. Silence. Silence.

Del Toro fell in love at the age of seven with James Whale's 1931 film Frankenstein,

which starred Boris Karloff as the creature. I want to talk with you about the 1931

film Frankenstein, which was directed by James Whale, who also directed the first film version

of showboat, which is quite a contrast. And the first version of Waterloo Bridge,

which is his version is so brutal and sort of brachian, he was a very interesting director and a

very interesting man. Well, I watched that movie so many times when I was a child because it used

to be run frequently on a million dollar movie in New York and they would show one movie and run

it over and over all week. And then I watched it again a few nights ago because I wanted to refresh

my memory. And part of what I love about the movie is just the other worldliness of it.

The cinematography is so good and it reminds me of film noir, German expressionism,

and it's misty, it's stormy, it's dreamlike. It's very modern, by the way. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, for 1931, this film, well, Whale and a lot of this era of Hollywood film

maker is extremely influenced by German cinema. And to the point where Whale,

those are an artist that is not apparent to the audience until you tell them to look for it,

if the shadows on the set didn't fall the way Whale liked it, he would spray paint them.

Whoa, really? Yeah, there's a lot of shadows in the window that don't correspond to the light

that is being poured on the set. And the light is, the shadows are painted with spray paint

on the walls. And now that I told you, if you watch it again, you'll see it here and there.

Did the style of filmmaking, the shadows, the lighting, the mist, the nightmarish quality of the

images, did that influence you as a filmmaker? It did up to a certain point, and it did only

on certain movies. Like, for example, on Pinocchio, the creation of Pinocchio is shot like a horror film.

But the creation of the creature in this film is shown like a concert, like a joyful

cornecopia of anatomical parts, blood, ligament, and muscles, which has never been shown

in any of the versions before. But to me, it was a mandatory because I wanted to see

Victor at his professional best, and at his artistic best. So I talked to my composer,

the Alexander display, and I said, we're going to do it with a waltz. And I'm going to shoot it like a

fun, fun-filled concert of anatomical parts.

Did you study anatomy in order to do that?

Yes, first of all, I've been obsessed by medicine and anatomy. I was the world-youngest type of

convict. Congratulations, that's quite an achievement. There must be a boy scout patch for that,

but I went to my mother every day, and I said, mother, I think I have tricky noses of the brain.

Mother, I have cirrhosis. I read an entire encyclopedia of health as a kid, and I've been

very taken by anatomy ever since. And we had a Victorian consultant, and I used an entire

medical library that I purchased from 1835 about it in London, and I used it to make sure the terms

and the procedures were up to speed, but not to advanced.

What did you tell your collaborators about what you wanted your Frankenstein to look like?

Because he looks nothing like Boris Kalloff.

No, I don't mean just me, I don't just mean his face, but he doesn't have like a bolt in his neck,

he doesn't look all stitched together.

What I was trying to capture is the beautiful style of the illustrations of an American

artist called Bernie Reinson, who illustrated for me the best illustrated version of the novel

ever, and who collaborated with me earlier on. And it has a very birony and very doomed,

very woothering height sort of look of a doomed hero. And when he's very first born and he's

bald and almost naked, I wanted it to feel like an anatomical chart, like something newly minted,

not a repair job on an ICU victim, but the skills of Victor, his exquisite sense of design,

the head is patterned after phrenology manuals from the 1800s, so they have very elegant,

almost aerodynamic lines. I wanted this alabaster marble statue feel, so it feels like a newly

minted human being. And we also tried to make it the way I remember the Jesus images,

life size, and the churches of my childhood. The original Frankenstein movie is so dreamlike,

nightmare-like. And I think several of your films have very nightmare-ish imagery in it.

I read you or a lucid dreamer. Yes, as a kid. As a kid. So explain what you mean when you say a lucid

dreamer. A lucid dream for me, or waking nightmares used to be called to, is you wake up

in your dream in the exact environment that you fell asleep on. But there are elements that are not

normal. I used to see monsters. I saw a burning figure at the foot of my bed, which is where the

burning archangel comes in Frankenstein. And that figure extended its arms and said, I live,

and I woke up screaming. When I was a very young child, I used to see a fawn, a goat man come from

behind an armor while the church chimed midnight in the neighborhood. And with each chimed,

the figure would come up. And then you wake up, and nothing is there, and you're covered in

sweat. And that's sort of lucid dreaming or waking nightmare states, which are a disruption of the

R&M cycle on the brain. But to you as a kid is truly harrowing. So you would dream that you woke

up and escape the nightmare only to find that the nightmare is still is going on. So it makes

the nightmare seem even more like reality. Yes, which is why one of the best images in the novel

of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is, had never been rendered on film until now. And it was my

favorite moment reading it as an A. G. Levin. I read the novel. And is the moment Victor wakes up

from the night of creation. And the creature is standing at the foot of the bed looking back at him.

As a kid, I held my breath. I was shocked. And I prayed for decades that I could make that

moment come to life on a film before anyone. And fortunately nobody did it.

Well, we have to take a short break here. If you're just joining us, my guest is Guillermo del Toro.

He wrote and directed the new film Frankenstein, a new interpretation of the story. We'll be right

back. This is fresh air. This message comes from Jerry. Many people are overpaying on car insurance.

Why? Switching providers can be a pain. Jerry helps make the process painless. Jerry is the only

app that compares rates from over 50 insurers in minutes and helps you switch fast with no

spam calls or hidden fees. Drivers who save with the Jerry could save over $1,300 a year before

you renew your car insurance policy. Download the Jerry app or head to Jerry.ai slash NPR.

This message comes from BetterHelp. International Women's Day is this March. Time to celebrate

all women, the leaders, the caregivers, the hype friends, the how do you do it all types.

Women deserve to be reminded how much they matter and that therapy offers a space to care for

themselves. BetterHelp makes it simple by matching you with a qualified therapist based on your

needs and preferences. Visit BetterHelp.com slash NPR for 10% off.

Do you think that your lucid dreams when you were a child relate to how you fell in love with

movies when you were a child? Yes. Because movies are so dream-like, but they might haunt your

dreams. You might be afraid of them, but you're not literally going to think that you live in that

world. You absolutely are absolutely right. The first film I saw was William Wyler's

Wuthering Heights with Lawrence Olivier. I went with my mother to a cinema downtown that was

super cheap and showed very old movies. It was really gothic atmosphere with rain and the moors

and Olivier. It's basically a ghost story in many ways Wuthering Heights and I fell asleep

full of fear. I dreamt my dream and woke up in the theater with the movie still playing.

So exactly, my first movie was part of a lucid dream. Exactly.

Well, what was your emotional reaction to that? You're looking at it.

That's when I fell in love with gothic romance and I couldn't have been more than four.

Why do I know it? Because I remember the house we were living in, where I was born and

my father won the lottery, the national lottery in 1969, which would make me five years old when we

moved from that house to a giant house in the outskirts of the city. You father won the lottery

the like how much money did he win? Six million dollars in sixteen. Which is the entire

budget of Planet of the Apes. That's amazing. How did it change your life?

Completely. I mean, completely, we moved into a house and lived a very sort of strange life.

I mean, we have all sorts of pets. We have eagles, a pet lion, thirty dollars.

Oh, well, well, well, well. You had a zoo.

Yeah, we had a zoo. I could go like Danny and the shining. I could go on my tricycle for hours

in the long corridors. Sometimes like a magic realism novel, I would go four weeks without seeing

a single adult. I would find food on the fridge. I would find clean clothes on my drawers and I

didn't interact with many adults. I would just, you know, exist in a mysterious life

in a enchanted castle. Six million dollars was a lot more than it is now.

It was. And one of the things he did is he bought a library and filled it with books that he never

read. But I read them all. And that's why I read the encyclopedia of anatomy and health. And

that's why I read all my classics, you know, Moby Dick, Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn,

Edgar Allan Poe, Oscar Wilde.

Well, so what happened to the money? Because he was held for a million dollars

about 30 years later. Yes. And didn't have the money. Well, what happened is my dad controlled

every single, none of us had access to that money. My father raised those, he would say, you want,

I would say I want to buy film for my camera and he would say, okay, go to the car dealership and

clean all the cars all week. And Saturday I'll give you a third of it. You come back another

three weeks. I'll buy you a reel of super eight. He didn't want to raise us as if we had everything.

So, you know, none of us had access to that money. He had the money to pay for the ransom,

but none of us could access it. Oh. Yeah, I had some money left from mimic when he was kiddin'

that. I put it all in. Friends of his gave us loans. It's a long story and not a very pleasant one

about the nature of humanity, but we managed to collect it. We had a negotiator that came from

England, and that negotiation was paid by Jim Cameron, who has been my friend for more than 30 years.

The director. The director. Who directed Titanic? I'm on another side.

The Titanic, the Renator II, Avatar, yeah. I love going to Mexico, and at the same time I have to admit

that I get sort of PTSD here and there, you know. PTSD? Yeah, I feel like something may happen

at any moment. Because of the kidnap? Yes, because I mean, when it lasts 72 days,

you go through all the stages of grief five times, you know. It increased my sense of being on

moored in my existence, not belonging in my existence. You know, it reaffirmed that feeling. That

was originally from childhood, and now as an adult, I feel in a different way. But you know, as Marty

Feldman puts it in young Frankenstein, it could be worse. It could be raining. Do you like young

Frankenstein? I adore it. That's a movie that is more people think is based on the whale movies.

It's partially based on that, but more than any other movie, and I recommend this movie

wholeheartedly, is based very much on Son of Frankenstein, which is a great Frankenstein movie.

Really, really terrific. Do you have a favorite song from young Frankenstein?

Yes, I think that the point of this agreement between Gene Wilder and Mel Brooks, which is the

most brilliant moment, is putting on the rich. Yes, yes. I think that's not only one of the greatest

comedies I've ever made. It's one of the great Frankenstein movies I've ever made. It is so

much its own identity that people believe erroneously that the blind hermit comes from young Frankenstein

sometimes, and it comes obviously from the novel and from Brighter Frankenstein, the whale movie,

which is an exquisite sequel to the first Frankenstein. Game of the Tour has been such a pleasure

talking with you. Thank you so much for coming back to the show. Always a pleasure and thank you

for the wisdom and the careful guiding of this lengthy interview, which I adored every second of.

I really appreciate you saying that. I love talking with you.

Guillermo Diltoro, speaking with Terry Gross, last October. His film Frankenstein has been nominated

for Nine Academy Awards. Ladies and gentlemen, may I now present a cultured, sophisticated,

man-about-town. Hit it!

Different types of wear-a-day coat pants with stripes are caught awake, coat perfect fit.

Dressed up like a million-dollar trooper.

Try mighty hard to look like Gary Cooper.

O, my O, my O, my!

Comets mix where rock-of-fellars walk with sticks or rumborallas in their midst.

That was Gene Wilder and Peter Boyle from the film Young Frankenstein.

After we take a short break, Criticat Large John Powers reviews islands, a noir-ish new film.

This is fresh air.

Support for NPR and the following message come from GoodRx.

Tired of paying too much for prescriptions?

Take control of your health and your budget with GoodRx.

GoodRx lets you compare prescription prices at over 70,000 pharmacies

and instantly find discounts up to 80%.

Plus, access telehealth and wellness tips all in one place.

GoodRx is not insurance, but even if you have insurance or Medicare,

GoodRx may beat your copay.

Save time and money on prescriptions.

Go to GoodRx.com slash fresh.

This message comes from Grammarly.

From emails and reports to proposals, work today demands clear thinking

and confident communication.

90% of professionals say Grammarly has saved them time writing and editing their work.

It helps simplify complex ideas so your message lands clearly and quickly.

This is AI that works with you, not over you.

In a world of generic AI, don't sound like everyone else.

With Grammarly, you never will.

Download Grammarly for free at Grammarly.com.

In the new film, Islands, out this week,

a washed up tennis pro gives lessons at a fancy hotel in the Canary Islands.

But when he meets an elegant woman with an unlikable husband,

things take a noirish turn.

Our critic at large, John Powers says the plot may sound familiar,

but Islands takes you places you don't expect.

After the apocalyptic death and destruction of World War II,

entire nation struggled to start anew amidst the physical and psychological rubble.

There was a steady outpouring of stories that took place in settings that were barren,

stripped down, inhospitable.

The most famous of these was probably waiting for Godot,

whose stage decoration is described thus.

A country road, a tree, evening.

Such a landscape is itself a statement about the stark reality of existence.

One shared by countless post-war movies and books,

whose characters inhabit deserts, empty beaches, mountain fortresses,

bombed out cities, and impoverished villages.

You get a modern upmarket version of this kind of arid landscape in islands,

a teasingly spare, slow-burn drama by German filmmaker Jan Oleg Gerste,

here working in English.

Set on Fuerza Ventura, one of Spain's Canary Islands off the coast of North Africa,

it lures you in like a conventional thriller,

then turns into something less predictable.

Looking a bit like Peter Fonda in his scruffy days,

Sam Riley plays the quietly sympathetic Tom,

a broken-down tennis pro who's ended up on Fuerza Ventura,

a small island that's basically a collection of beaches,

volcanic slag, and craggy cliffs.

He gives tennis lessons to the guests of a luxury hotel

that in these surroundings looks like the QE2 has somehow docked on the moon.

Although his life might appear enviable, days in the sun,

nights of dancing, drinking, and women eager to party,

he wakes up with the daily hangover of a man trying to convince himself

that purgatory is paradise.

This changes when he starts giving tennis lessons to Anton,

the young son of a rich married couple,

the sophisticated Anne, that's Stacey Martin, a former actress,

and Dave, a jerk businessman who specializes in a kind of bullying friendliness.

Tom enjoys teaching Anton and starts doing the family favors.

Here, after Tom helps them get a better room,

Dave, played by Jack Farthing, insists on compensating.

Well, how much extra is it?

There's no chalk.

Come on.

You'll pay the difference.

Really, it's sorted.

Oh my god, okay, well, at least let me know you don't have to worry.

Come on, let me know.

No, really, it made me feel better.

It's fine.

You sure?

Well, then at least let us buy you dinner.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely, and somewhere nice,

not this catastrophic hotel food.

Yeah, okay.

Why not?

I know a little place in town.

That's it.

Anne and Dave are dangerously unhappy.

And for those of us raised on double indemnity and body heat,

we start waiting for the inevitable Torrid sex scene and murder.

And we worry for Tom, a decent guy who Riley gives a very nice vibe.

As he guides them around the island and gets pushed into taking Dave out clubbing,

I wondered if he'd never seen a film noir.

Otherwise, he'd know he's heading for trouble.

Eventually, that trouble comes.

Dave disappears, the cops are called in,

and it turns out Anne hasn't been entirely forthcoming.

Yeah, what makes islands good is that it's not just another reheated noir.

As our anxiety mounts, a feeling accentuated by the musical score,

we begin to pit through the story's sly hints and possible clues.

Have Tom and Anne actually met before?

Why exactly is Tom drawn to Anton?

Why is he bending over backwards for people he barely knows?

Is he hoping to escape his spiritual solitude

by throwing himself into the search for the missing Dave?

The movie makes us feel Tom's, indeed everyone's, isolation.

It's not for nothing the film is called islands.

Gershtus carefully calibrated images show how the characters are defined by the meaningless

beauty of the island, where even the sunset can feel a bit cold,

and the meaningless pleasures of holiday reveling,

swatting tennis balls back and forth,

guzzling drink after drink,

throwing one's music-fueled arms toward the sky in the disco,

over and over and over again.

In its blend of high art style and pulp crime story,

islands is a nifty piece of what we might call existential pop.

While both its style and story clearly suggest a male riff,

a Michelangelo Antonio's great film, La Vintura,

whose heroine goes looking for a mysteriously vanished woman.

Islands also made me think of Michelle Welbeck's nifty novella Lanzerati,

about an alienated hedonist search for meaning on another of the Canary Islands.

And even the White Lotus TV series,

where both tourists and hotel employees face crises that call their lives into question.

Now, I'm happy to say that, for all its metaphysical overtones,

islands doesn't end on one of those unresolved enigmas that leaves you shrieking at the screen.

We learn everything we need to know, and so does our hero.

Realizing his confused inertia for contentment,

Tom finally grasps that the only way to stop his life from being empty

is to do something meaningful to fill it up.

John Powers reviewed the new film, Islands.

On Monday's show, Ethan Hawke. He's been nominated for an Oscar for his starring performance in

the film, Blue Moon, about lyricist Lorenz Hart. In the streaming series, The Lowdown,

he's a small time investigative journalist constantly getting into trouble.

He'll talk about his movies and his life. From his years as a teenage film star to today,

hope you can join us.

To keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews,

follow us on Instagram at NPR Fresh Air. Fresh Air's executive producers are Danny Miller and

Sam Brigger. Our senior producer today is Roberta Sharock. Our technical director and engineer is

Audrey Bentham, with additional engineering support by Joyce Lieberman,

Julian Hertzfeld, and Deanna Martinez. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by

Phyllis Myers and Marie Baldenado, Lauren Crenzel, Theresa Madden, Monique Nazareth,

Thea Chaliner, Susan Yacundi, and Anna Bauman. Our digital media producer is Molly CV Nesper.

For Terry Gross and Tanya Mosley, I'm David B. Kool.

This message comes from NPR sponsor Charles Schwab. Financial decisions can be tricky. Your biases

can lead you astray. Financial decoder and original podcasts from Charles Schwab can help.

Download the latest episode and subscribe at Schwab.com slash financial decoder.

This message comes from Capella University. That spark you feel? That's your drive for more.

Capella University's Flex Path Learning format lets you earn your degree at your pace.

Without putting life on pause, learn more at capella.edu.

This message comes from Jerry. Many people are overpaying on car insurance. Why?

Switching providers can be a pain. Jerry helps make the process painless.

Jerry is the only app that compares rates from over 50 insurers in minutes,

and helps you switch fast with no spam calls or hidden fees.

Drivers who save with Jerry could save over $1,300 a year before you renew your car insurance policy.

Download the Jerry app or head to Jerry.ai slash NPR.