Mary Shelley - Un amore immortale

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.

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?"

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.

This film deserves more than 6.3 on IMDB. Douglas Booth and Fanning present two people who the audience may perhaps have preconceptions of their characters- without feeding to their expectations which results in two genuine characters both with flaws but both human as apposed to the figures history created out of them.

I had only previously read excerpts from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, but it's hard to deny the endearing legacy the novel had in literature and even in cinema. I was pretty hyped to see this because it seemed intriguing and also because it was clearly Elle Fanning appreciation weekend. After making the assumption that most of the events in the film are fairly accurate I must admit that I enjoyed this film.

The film follows the early life of Mary Shelley and her first love to Percy Shelley. Percy was a bit of a philanderer but Mary persevered because she loved him. She experiences heartbreak and loss through her early years but then comes upon circumstances where she is able to write her own novel in a competition. Of course, this novel comes to be known as Frankenstein. However, its tough for Mary to get the credit she deserves for it because it was not common for women at the time to be known for their writing. Also, her husband was already an established writer so people assumed it was his story.

I'm a fan of both of the Fanning sisters but I think Elle is the better actress. After seeing her in this and How to Talk to Girls at Parties, I can see her dedication and how committed she is to a role. She is a strong point as to why this film is enjoyable. I also liked the set and costume design was very accurate for period detail. Technically, the film looks the part so its nice to stare at. I haven't seen Haifaa al-Mansour's previous effort but feel inclined to check it out since I enjoyed this biopic enough.

I'd say the main weakness of the film is its lack of focus on Frankenstein. The film is primarily focused on Shelley's love life and then kind of kicks into focusing on her writing efforts but even so the film does not really illustrate the importance of the work or the profound effect it has on people. They cover the inspiration for the work but I don't think its nearly enough. Overall, a pretty solid film with flaws but one thats heralded by a strong lead performance.

7/10