Mary Shelley: A Review (Review #2040)

MARY SHELLEY

Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus has haunted the imagination for over a century. The real story of its creator is more haunted and tragic. Mary Shelley is a respectable film with one good, strong central performance that makes up, barely, for its stodgy manner. 

Young Mary Godwin (Elle Fanning) has a fraught relationship with her stepmother, Mary Jane Clairmont (Joanne Froggatt). She is, however, fond of her stepsister Claire (Bel Powley). In a mix to both expand her education and bring relief to the household and struggling bookshop, her father William Godwin (Stephen Dillane) sends Mary to Scotland to stay with family friends. Here, Mary meets the dashing renegade poet Percy Bysshe Shelley (Douglas Booth). 

Claire hoodwinks her family into sendind for Mary and soon she returns full-time. She also reencounters Shelley, and a romance begins. Mary is initially unaware that Percy is still married and with a daughter, but soon their passion cannot be denied. Despite Mr. Godwin's own radical views, he is appalled at the liaison. He is more appalled when Mary and Percy run off together, accompanied by Claire. They live the high life until debt gets in the way. Mary has and then loses their child, in part to Percy's wicked ways. 

Claire, for her part, has an affair with more dashing and more renegade poet Lord Byron (Tom Sturridge). They go to his Geneva estate, where Lord Byron is somewhat pleased with their arrival. Mary is a haunted figure: haunted by the death of her mother after Mary's birth, by the loss of her own child, and by ideas of reviving the dead. In this dark and stormy season, Mary will pick up Lord Byron's challenge of all writing ghost stories to create her masterpiece, Frankenstein. Will she receive the recognition that her masterwork merits? Will her marriage to Percy, now free after his wife's suicide, bring happiness? Will her friendship with Byron's doctor frenemy John William Polidori (Ben Hardy) grow to something more?

If anything, Mary Shelley is elevated by Elle Fanning's performance. Affecting a convincing British accent, Fanning shows Mary to be this girl growing into a woman of renown and resolve. As the film goes on, Fanning reveals Mary's doubts, struggles, even shock at the man for whom she has sacrificed so much. At one point, one of Percy's friends suggested that they become involved. She rejets the suggestion, but then is shocked when Percy advocates that she should have taken up the offer. We see in Fanning how Mary is more than upset at Percy's manner. We see her sense of betrayal, that his love for her is not the way she loves him.

It is quite a good performance, and Elle Fanning should be commended for bringing Mary Shelley to life. She is not a bon vivant but also not a woman of sorrow. Instead, Fanning's Mary is a complicated figure.

I was also surprised to see that Douglas Booth was actually not bad as Percy Shelley. Booth is an exceptionally pretty figure. However, in the few projects that I have seen him in (a television adaption of Great Expectations and the horror of Jupiter Ascending), Booth has been a walking mannequin. Yes, he is very pretty, but also very blank, unable to communicate much in terms of emotion. Mary Shelley is probably the best that he has been when it comes to what I have seen of his filmography. Booth has a particularly good moment when he speaks surprisingly elegantly about his loveless marriage.

On the whole, I found the performances were all good to strong, a credit to director Haifaa Al-Mansour. Where Al-Mansour and screenwriter Emma Jensen go wrong is in making Mary Shelley a very stodgy affair. It is well-acted, but it is also very stately, a bit stiff at time. The actors, with all their good work, played the parts. That is, however, the problem. They played parts. They did not play people.

I liked Mary Shelley just enough to give it a mild recommendation. It could have been better. However, it is just good enough. Like her novel, I figure a biography is better than the film. 

1797-1851

DECISION: C+