Mary Shelley (2017) Film Review
Directed by: Haifaa al-Mansour
This adaptation of the conception of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is a fascinating biopic-cum-horror movie-cum-romance. Directed by Haifaa Al-Mansour, the Saudi Arabian filmmaker, and starring Elle Fanning (of Maleficent fame) as the 16-year-old daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin. Fanning’s vivacious naivety and youthful features perfectly capture Mary’s innocence and fighting spirit, and her skills lift what is otherwise a generic romanticised biopic sparsely populated by A-listers including a dashing Douglas Booth as Mary’s poet husband Percy Shelley, and Game of Thrones star Maisie Williams as Mary’s childhood friend Isabelle Baxter.
The film relates the events of Mary Shelley’s life from her meeting of Percy to the recognition of her rights as author of the growing in popularity sci-fi novel Frankenstein, and includes flashbacks to small events of her childhood to create a more rounded picture of the author, the strange way she learned to read, by tracing her deceased mother’s name on her grave. The film’s bias is that Mary based Frankenstein on her unhealthy relationship with Percy, which with a researchers eye isn’t necessarily true, but is an interesting take on how a young woman of her time could create such a work of creative genius, and unfathomable idiosyncrasy as the pioneer of the sci-fi genre, but at the same time create a terrifying and emotional discussion of love and loss and nature vs nurture.
The film uses dramatic techniques throughout that reflect the telling of a ghost story, in order to accentuate the theme of Mary’s longing to create a ghost story of her own. The crucial episode of the conception of her novel happened at the villa of Lord Byron in Geneva, when the host challenged his guests, Mary, Percy, Mary’s half-sister and one of Byron’s short-lived flings Jane/Claire Clairmont, and Byron’s doctor/drug dealer John Polidori, to a ghost story writing competition, in the drug-induced maddened state these bohemians were in trapped in the villa after weeks of bad weather. Rich in symbolism; the strewn bottles, heavy drapings, dramatic artworks, stormy weather, empty rooms devastated by the remains of nights of debauchery; and drawn out, I liked the way Al-Mansour presented this episode in the film, but the characterization of Byron as the deranged monster despised by all but Jane and Percy seemed a little out of character. Yes, Byron was a womanizer, a drug addict, an egotistical maniac with a mangled foot, but was also an incredibly well-respected poet. The many scandals surrounding Byron’s private life brought him notoriety, and the phrase mad, bad and dangerous to know, was used as a description of the poet, but literary circles admired him and the public adored him. Instead of presenting Byron as an egotistical eccentric with a large sexual appetite, Al-Mansour has characterized him as the antagonist of the film, leading Percy and Claire astray, and diminishing the work of Mary and Polidori.
A few crucial moments of the film are slightly dampened with imperfect dialogue that is just slightly too cliched, especially from her father. However, the general aesthetic of the film, and the gentle innocent but fiery fever from the 20-year-old Fanning as Mary creates a film that exceeds expectations, and gives us a compelling narrative of the fascinating story of Mary Shelley, and piqued my further interest into her story.
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