In 1818, “Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus” was published and became an almost immediate sensation. “Mary Shelley” is the story of its author and the creative inspiration behind the groundbreaking book. Well, eventually. Before we discover the titular writer’s genius, we must endure a fusty period drama that unfolds with such a startling lack of imagination, it’s nearly remarkable how conventional the production is, particularly when the life and famed work of Mary Shelley is so boldly unconventional. A film desperately in need of an electric charge, “Mary Shelley” is simply another cinematic corpse on the table.
When we first meet Mary Shelley (Elle Fanning), she’s wanting a little bit of excitement in her life. The daughter of the late author Mary Wollstonecraft and political philosopher William Godwin (Stephan Dillane), she finds her thrills by surreptitiously reading ghost stories in the graveyard, while shirking her responsibilities in her fathers’s bookstore and household. However, the trouble she’s been looking for soon comes walking in the door in the shape of poet Percy Shelley (Douglas Booth). He’s an attractive rake, all tousled, pushed forward hair; it looks like he could front a neo-folk revival band. Even though he’s married, Percy doesn’t believe in monogamy, partially because he made a bad choice, partially on an ideological level, and partially because he’s young and hormonal. Mary is drawn to his creativity and unorthodox lifestyle, and it doesn’t take much to convince her to run away with wordsmith, with her step-sister Claire (Bel Powley) in tow, who is also seeking more adventure.
However, their idealistic dreams of living, loving and writing quickly curdle. Percy is essentially an old timey trust fund kid, and when Daddy turns off the tap, he’s soon borrowing money to keep afloat. When Mary become’s pregnant, his roving eye turns to Claire, but she’s smitten with Percy’s pal Lord Byron (Tom Sturridge), who also chooses to live decadently, but as a writer whose work actually sells, he can afford to be scandalous. However, that’s a luxury that Mary, Percy, and Claire can’t indulge and their bliss becomes deeply strained. But, this turmoil inspires the literary work of a lifetime.
If the material here has cinematic potential, it’s lost in the sprawling, unfocused script by Emma Jensen and director Haifaa Al-Mansour (“Wadjda”). The film is mostly a string of scenes of Mary and Percy fighting, splitting apart (there is almost a comically large amount of scenes of people storming out of rooms or closing doors), and reconciling, yet there’s very little sense of what eventually compels the couple to make their relationship official through marriage. Elsewhere, there are subplots or diversions that don’t seem to serve much narrative purpose, and this is most evident in an early sequence which sees Mary sent away to Scotland, spend about five minutes of screen time there with Isabel (Maisie Williams), the daughter of her hosts, before returning home. Yes, it’s where she meets Percy for the first time, but considering he shows up again a few minutes later at her home, the explanation behind his appearance is nothing a few lines of dialogue couldn’t solve.
Perhaps most disappointing is that after breaking out with her warm, distinctive, debut film, Al-Mansour feels completely anonymous here. There’s no doubt that the story of a woman working against the expectations of her gender of the time was appealing to the filmmaker, but the approach here is staid, and safe to a fault. We’ve seen this respectable but unexceptional sort of period fare countless times before, and it doesn’t help that the screenplay takes what should be the dramatic peak of the picture — the writing of ‘Frankenstein’ — and reduces it to a montage. “Mary Shelley” may cover all the bases in detailing the writer’s early life, but it does a disservice to the subject to treat the creation of ‘Frankenstein’ with the same import as Godwin’s consideration to sell his version of the “The Illiad” in the original Greek. The performances also fail to connect, and the usually reliable Fanning is serviceable, but left undone by a story that doesn’t give Mary an arc so much as a linear, Wikipedia style journey through her life.
Somewhere inside of “Mary Shelley” (which could probably use another edit before its released in cinemas) is a story about a tragic heroine, who channeled her hardship into a monumental work that became an indispensable genre classic. Unfortunately, the picture swings too far, with the tragedy simply turning to misery, both for Mary — where her ultimate creative redemption doesn’t feel particularly satisfying — and the audience, who see Shelley’s great work become just another chapter in her life. [D]
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