Review: The Bride!
Oh boy. An unfortunate example of how a big budget, A-list talent, ambitious story structure, and a commendable message can add up to far less than the sum of its parts.
I can pinpoint the precise moment in The Bride! where I finally threw up my hands and stopped grasping for reasons to extend the film the benefit of the doubt. For more than an hour I had been rooting for the movie, clinging onto the positive elements and hoping it would end up in a place that retroactively minimized the many clunky and ill-conceived parts. Then, Jessie Buckley, playing the recently resurrected "bride" of Christian Bale's Frankenstein's monster, switching between personalities because she is also possessed by 19th century Frankenstein author Mary Shelley, delivered a speech in which she shoehorned the exclamation "Me too!" multiple times. For the record, I am a fan of a good horror movie metaphor when it is delivered with subtlety and nuance, not so much when it is chiseled into the face of a sledgehammer and smashed into my forehead. The idea is excellent: Using the Bride of Frankenstein story to explore themes of consent makes a ton of sense, and this is sadly still a topic that we desperately need to reckon with as a society. The execution, unfortunately, is deeply flawed.
Veteran actor Maggie Gyllenhaal wrote and directed The Bride! in her second effort in those roles. The film exhibits common hallmarks of a talented but novice filmmaker - it has the creativity and courage to challenge conventional storytelling methods, and lacks the wherewithal to edit, simplify, and ultimately abandon ideas that don't work. The elevator pitch is actually pretty cool: The Bride of Frankenstein reimagined as Bonnie and Clyde or Natural Born Killers. (Wait, why am I just now realizing that Natural Born Killers is basically a de-romanticized take on Bonnie and Clyde?) The script's biggest misstep is a foundational one, however, the bizarre, meta choice to make real-life 1800's author, Shelley, a character that both provides narration and also possesses mob moll Buckley before her murder and eventual resurrection. Buckley handles the moll character beautifully, but struggles to incorporate the arch, over-exaggerated Shelley character who bursts forth with obnoxious, writerly asides at every turn. I kept wishing we could spend more time with Ida (the moll), but Shelley would inevitably pop up and stall any character momentum that might be going on. The other primary challenge with the script is just how heavily it drives the consent topic into the ground. Every living male character is a one-dimensional predator who has Ida's worst interests at heart, from her mafia associates to random party-goers and people on the street. The worst side effect of this approach is that it makes Bale's Frankenstein's monster a hero by comparison, and seemingly let's him off the hook for his transgressions. The whole point of using this particular story to explore this theme, in my mind, is to hold the monster and the scientist (here played by Annette Bening) to task for bringing a dead woman back to life as a predetermined companion to a man she's never met before. That's the act of coercion that should be explored, not some generic street toughs cornering a woman in an alley.
Even if it was executed well, The Bride! was always going to be up against it. Not only did Guillermo del Toro beat it to market with a perfect Frankenstein adaptation, but Obsession explored the same themes at 1/100th of the cost to unbelievable success just a couple of months later. The root of a great movie is there, it's just swallowed up by a bunch of bad decisions. I do think Buckley does a commendable job, she just isn't done any favors by the script. Bale's portrayal of an older, world-weary yet paradoxically wide-eyed Frankenstein's monster is interesting, and I did enjoy some of the frenetic, punk rock energy of the production style. Yet, any individual positive is ultimately wiped away by the overwriting and under-editing on display. If nothing else, it did retrospectively improve my already lofty opinions of two 31 for 31 movies this year.
Comments