Mary Shelley is rolling in her grave.
While I was optimistic about a modern take on the story of Shelley’s “Frankenstein,” Maggie Gyllenhaal’s “The Bride,” released on March 6, I finished the film uncomfortable and underwhelmed.
Originally, the movie was advertised as a “Bonnie and Clyde” style reinterpretation of the classic monster tale. Set in 1930s Chicago, the movie follows Ida (Jessie Buckley), brought back from the dead by Dr. Cornelia Euphronious (Annette Bening) to become “The Bride” of Frankenstein’s monster (Christian Bale).
After her resurrection, the couple causes mayhem across America as they are hunted down by both police and mobsters, with “The Bride” becoming a feminist symbol for women’s liberation as their crime spree headlines the news. It was an intriguing concept that fell short, primarily due to pacing, dialogue and a nonsensical story that made me have to mentally recap the movie every 20 minutes.
The film’s pacing is incredibly drawn-out. For a two hour long movie, the scenes should hold importance for audience engagement. Instead, I was looking at my phone every 20 minutes in boredom. When the movie slowed down, it filled its run-length through extended, unnecessary intimate scenes between Buckley and Bale’s characters. This got old and uncomfortable extremely quickly. While some people may be entertained by the unrestrained nature of the film, I hated how it didn’t contribute to the plot. Every time one of those moments came onscreen, I knew the movie had run out of ideas.
The dialogue was choppy, slow and incredibly confusing. It made sense for the monsters in the movie, given Frankenstein’s monster’s characterization as a lonely, awkward creation and Buckley’s Bride as an amnesic corpse. However, the human characters were also afflicted by this inability to string a full, coherent sentence together. This addition made the movie go from awkward to borderline unbearable to watch.
The story had the makings of an artistic and clever retelling, but was closer akin to a puzzle left unfinished. Plot twists also came out of nowhere, and plot points were dropped.
The movie spoke about the objectification of women throughout history. It attempted to show that although Buckley’s character was brought back to serve as a companion for Bale’s, she establishes her own identity as a monster and refuses to be reduced to merely a trophy. The film makes a nice attempt at the message, but it is way too subtle and last-minute for it to have any impact.
One thing I will give the movie points for is its acting. Both Buckley and Bale did phenomenal despite the awkward script they were given, and supporting actors like Bening and Penélope Cruz made their characters feel real and human in their personalities and motivations. For what they had to work with, the cast gave Oscar-tier performances that were ultimately brought down by the unwatchability of the movie overall.
“The Bride” was a movie that made me want to leave the theatre. It was overdrawn, uncomfortable and loosely-tied together with a message about female liberation. The only saving grace was the cast, and even that was hanging on by a thread via the horrid dialogue and scriptwriting. Next time somebody takes a shot at Mary Shelley’s iconic stories, I hope they are able to stitch together something actually competent.
