Oscar Isaac On ‘In The Hand Of Dante’, ‘King Hamlet’ And The “Beautiful Symbolism” Of ‘Frankenstein’: “It’s About Generational Trauma”

Oscar Isaac is doing a bit of time traveling these days, cinematically at least, with three new films that all debuted at fall festivals. In current release and airing on Netflix is Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein, set in the late 18^th century, in which Isaac plays the title role of Victor Frankenstein (just nominated Best Actor In a Drama for Golden Globes). And in Julian Schnabel’s sweeping In the Hand of Dante, fresh from its debut at the Venice Film Festival in September, Isaac plays dual roles 700 years apart, ranging from the 14th to 21st centuries. Finally, in the personal documentary King Hamlet, which debuted in Telluride, his take on Hamlet in the 2017 Off Broadway Public Theater production of the 16^th century play is chronicled by none other than his wife, as real life and theater collide.

This prolific actor has been a man for all seasons on stage, screen and television, and now in his latest trio of projects he has apparently become an actor for all centuries.  Isaac has never shied away from a challenge or an era, and in fact, his first major starring role in film goes back even further, when he played Joseph in 2006’s The Nativity Story. Since then, he has made his mark in such notable films as Ex Machina, A Most Violent Year, Inside Llewyn Davis, Drive, X Men: Apocalypse, Dune, the animated Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, and as Poe Dameron in the Star Wars sequel trilogy, the latter taking him across centuries far into the future. His work in television, while less frequent, includes an Emmy-nominated performance in the HBO limited series Scenes From a Marriage. He has appeared often Off Broadway in various productions, and even on Broadway for a change in his most recent theatrical foray in 2023, The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window.

But first and foremost is his wild take on the mad creator of The Creature (played by Jacob Elordi) in Del Toro’s long-gestating passion project and childhood dream of bringing his own version of the Mary Shelley classic to the screen. Almost musical in some ways, as Victor conducts his creation coming to life, almost like a rock star on a mission, this is not your father’s Frankenstein. And Isaac knowsit, as we discussed when I caught up with him after he quick-tripped from the Venice premiere of Del Toro’s movie to an unannounced Sunday screening in Telluride, as well as for his Hamlet doc, where we squeezed in a conversation before he headed back to Venice for the world premiere of In the Hand of Dante.   

We zeroed in on what makes this version of Victor so different from what has come before. “I came back to look at the monitor, Guillermo’s like, ‘We’re making a gothic superhero. A real gothic, Victorian superhero,’ and that’s the thing. He’s such a mutable character, so there were so many facets to be able to explore. You know, the pleasure and the sensuality of the character, the monstrosity of the character, the rage, somebody that consciously, and even unconsciously, was wounded so badly at such a young age, and the resentment for that has a stranglehold on him,” Isaac says. “And so, the need to control that, to control that pain and to not allow that heartbreak to destroy him, turns into this need to be great, at any cost, because if I am great, then it’ll all make sense.”

Isaac is happy this version also delves into the subtext and more subtle themes this timeless tale holds, not simply as just a monster movie. “It’s a story about fathers and sons, and the way that this generational trauma just continues and continues, this pain that’s the inheritance that gets passed down,” he says. “And that’s the beautiful symbolism of what you see, all these circles everywhere in the sets because the story itself has a circularity to it. And then, when the creature begins his tale it’s also circular, but he breaks the circle at the end so that’s why there’s a glimmer of hope in this movie.”

And hope is definitely what we need now. It’s quite relevant, I suggest, mentioning that it could be interpreted as Victor creating his own AI, albeit far more primitively than today’s technology. Isaac, though, thinks it really isn’t so much about The Creature, but rather Victor’s need to create it. “The issue with it is more man than the thing itself and how one uses that thing, and also in order to achieve a goal what one is willing to do over an idea, and that’s why there’s this beautiful framing that Mary Shelley did, that Guillermo just really, really keys in on,” he says. “Natural stupidity rather than artificial intelligence. And also, you think about what the state of the world is in right now and what people are willing to do, and put up with, in order to achieve some ideal or some goal.”

As for working with Del Toro, Isaac says it could not have been a better experience. “He would direct me in jokes. Just the dirtiest Mexican jokes you can possibly imagine, but they were great pieces of direction. They’re kind of non-translatable, but he found a way to infuse joy and subversiveness. I think it was important that Victor just had this kind of fire of defiance in him. And so, there is a part of you, certainly at the beginning, that you root for the guy. You’re with him, because of just that will, and then you see that will become diseased, and you see him start to lie to himself as well, and allow himself to be cruel, and the oppressed becomes the oppressor,” he says. “And Guillermo, to have these dark elements, but then at the same time, have so much joy. He’s very open. So, everyone on the set feels like they’re a part of it. Everyone’s included, so it’s just very open, and that was very exciting.”

While he was ever so briefly in Telluride between sojourns to Venice, Isaac may have set a record for doing intros to his movies. In one night, he ran from theater to theater doing two intros for Frankenstein and two for King Hamlet. The documentary was shot and directed by his wife, Elvira Lind, and it has been years in the making as it were, or at least in the releasing. They weren’t sure if it was just going to turn out to be private home movies, but so much happened during the period he did the play in times of personal trauma and joy, and life and death.

“It was a four-hour production, two intermissions, and the other beautiful part of it is my son was born, you know, a month after my mother passed and right before we started rehearsals for it,” he says. “Elvira started filming this crazy confluence of events. And it’s this incredible remembrance of this moment in time when all these strands came together. You know that the amazing poet David White, he wrote about the three marriages, the marriage to a person, the marriage to a vocation, and the marriage to the self, and how there’s no such thing as balancing those things. Those things intertwine completely, and I think this movie’s a beautiful example of that. I think she was just curious what was on there. And she was looking through it, and she started slowly piecing things together, and putting it together, and seeing this story emerge, and now we have King Hamlet.”

He also does double duty in Julian Schnabel’s swing-for-the-fences epic In the Hand of Dante, in which he plays both the late 20th-century author Nick Tosches, who wrote the book on which the film is based, and 14th-century Dante Alighieri, a dual role that traverses 700 years. The film is currently looking for American distribution. It divided critics in Venice, but what great art doesn’t? Isaac was all in for this one and praises Schnabel for being the painstaking artist that he always has been and remains. “You know, he’s amazing, he trusts his intuition above all else, and he paints that way as well,” he says. “It’s like, first stroke, best stroke. And he moves in that way, and it is an uncompromising work of art. It is expressionistic. He’s not so interested in communicating ideas as expressing very big ideas, and we went really deep into that one.”

He describes the Tosches book as a bit of a “fever dream” but isn’t surprised Schnabel was drawn to the two-tiered story as he makes movies about artists. “He’s very interested in how you capture that ineffable thing of creating art in a film, you know, and do it so that it’s not what it looks like to be an artist, but it’s what does it feel like to be an artist, and what does it feel like to be an artist in a world of commerce, right?” he asks. “And the truth about what an artist is, is in a way, to be exiled. Like, part of committing to that kind of vocation is to be taken away, to be exiled, to be on the outside, to be alienated, and how often that happens. And in Dante’s case, he was quite literally exiled from Florence, and that is when he was able to come to terms and allow for this incredible masterpiece to come out, The Divine Comedy. And the irony of this other person as well, who is a writer in the early 2000s, who is being squeezed by the world of commerce, by the world of gangsters, and fakes, and phonies, and selling stuff, and who is cynical, and finding his connection to the point where he is Dante.”

If that sounds somewhat challenging, it is also undoubtedly the kind of assignment Isaac likes to take on as an actor. “Yeah. In a way, there’s three Nicks that are happening. Well, there’s three characters. There’s, like, the real Nick, there’s writer Nick, there’s writer Nick kind of creating this fictional Nick, and there’s writer Nick writing Dante and then being Dante. So, there’s these twisting strands, and the way that he kind of finds his way back to himself,” he says.

And Isaac always seems to find a way back to himself to see what’s next, and what century he will find that person in. In the immediate future it is Season 2 of the Emmy winning Netflix series Beef opposite Carey Mulligan.

In many ways, Oscar Isaac is a bit like Victor Frankenstein, stirring the pot and putting the complicated pieces together of the next character he gets to create.