Mary Shelley

My wife and I enjoyed this movie, we watched it at home on DVD from our public library.

If you are not a literary expert, like I am not, you know of "Frankenstein" and you might even know it was a book written by Mary when she was still a teenager in the early 1800s. But most of us know little to nothing of British and European society at that time, and how low a moral character poets such as her eventual husband, Shelley, and their friend Lord Byron were. The poetry is revered, the men who wrote not so much so. Mary had to be strong to endure.

Anyways this is a good movie, although perhaps a bit slow at 2 hours. Elle Fanning who apparently also was still a teenager when this was filmed is really good as Mary Shelley from about 16 to about 18, and the movie goes a long way to portray the influences in her early life. She did write other books but they seemingly were not particularly studied until fairly recently.

So, do we think of her as a "one hit wonder?"

This film tells the story of Mary, the daughter of two literary stars. The story concentrates on her life, and the circumstances which inspired her famous story "Frankenstein".

The story is very good because it captures emotions wonderfully. From love, jealousy, loneliness, disappointment, arrogance and despair, emotions are skilfully displayed on screen. I find the story captivating, and I am drawn to the characters' less than fortunate world.

I always make the time to read IMDB's user reviews before I waste my time on a movie. For some reason I decided not to on this evening, as I was eternally bored with my own existence. The experience of watching Mary Shelley has made me reconsider my tactic of choosing movies based on user reviews, as we all have such diverse taste in an artists work, we should not let the audiences opinions hold too much merit over our own taste. I enjoyed the movie from start to end, and the actors did a wonderful job at the portrayal of their characters. I have taken the time to dive to deep into Mary Shelley's life story, so I do not know how true this story is to her life, but the movie did manage to keep my attention for just over two hours and entertained me over the course of that time. I must say this movie managed to spark a deep interest in me for the young author of Frankenstein, and I shall now proceed to do more research on the infamous Mary Shelley.

Frankenstein is one of the greatest novels ever written. It was brilliantly conceived and executed and significantly ahead of its time. The Hollywood-ization of this novel is usually lacking all merit of the work, missing the novel's primary question: who was the greater monster-- the creature or the doctor?

This movie takes great liberties in dramatizing the life of the author prior to her writing the book. It does so fairly well-- to the point of discomfort in how women were viewed and treated in those intellectually stimulating but socially dark times. The climate of England and surrounding areas was one of bigotry, inequality and extreme prejudice. This film presents the despair of such times quite well, drawing the viewer into the potential feelings of the author when writing the book.

That is the weakness of the film: it is largely conjecture. As a work of fiction it does reasonably well. Lovers of gothic romance may be entranced (if unsettled) by the presentation and emotional darkness of the film. For what the writers and directors were attempting, they achieved to an extent. However the storytelling is somewhat interrupted and set back by unwarranted flashbacks and other film gimmicks that detracted from the reality of the story. One such gimmick is nowhere more obvious than at the very end of the film where they present a spoken line quite important to the movie-- AFTER text blurbs discussing the lives of the main characters. Such was poorly done and interrupted the flow of the movie right at the end-- in my opinion an unforgivable sin in movie making. (I might have given this another star were it not for that significant flaw in directing.)

As to the accuracy, that is likely irrelevant. This is a dramatization, and that's the simple truth of it. Whether the story is accurate or not is secondary to achieving its purpose. It tells the intended story decently-- just not well enough to draw in the viewer and make itself believable. It focused too greatly on inconsequential things of no matter to the story, and too little on issues of potential greatness. As such it was worth watching, but viewers might not expect storytelling anywhere near the expertise of the original novel.

To the viewer who wrote of hating the novel and enjoying the Hollywood monster movies much more-- everyone has personal opinions, but it is a sad situation when a novel the quality and impact of Frankenstein is not understood and appreciated, more so when publicly boasted.

Mary Shelley: This film is a tad confused as it tries to fit so much into a 2 hour running time. There is the romance between Percy Shelley (Douglas Booth) and Mary Wollstonecraft (Elle Fanning); her freethinking father William Godwin (Stephen Dillane); her deceased mother Mary Wollstonecraft the author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman; the affair between Mary's stepsister Claire Clairmont (Bel Powley) and Lord Byron (Tom Sturridge); then there is the tale of the Swiss villa where the Frankenstein story was conceived. Mary even has a nasty stepmother (Joanne Froggatt).

Booth and Fanning both look exceedingly pretty and it's certainly lust if not love at first sight but somehow there are no real sparks in the relationship. Shelley is a cad who has deserted his wife and child and now hopes to have free love with Mary and more on the side. The real fire rages between Powley and Sturridge even if his Byron portrayal is somewhat reminiscent of Jason Isaacs plying Zhukov. The Swiss scenes where Frankenstein was thought up are surprisingly low key with Polidori (Ben Hardy) providing the main interest.

This might have worked better as a six hour TV mini-series. 6/10.