There are more movies based on Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” than nearly any other story ever published. But something’s missing from a lot of them. Most “Frankenstein” movies have a mad scientist, and they almost all have a creature made from corpses, but most Mary Shelley adaptations eagerly cut out Mary Shelley. The 2013 reimagining “I, Frankenstein” didn’t even give Shelley a “Inspired By” credit, burying her instead in the “Special Thanks” section. (Yeah, they seemed super thankful.) Even Guillermo Del Toro’s Oscar-nominated “Frankenstein” somehow found a way to conclude with a quote from Lord Byron — and not, pointedly, any words from Mary Shelley.
Maggie Gyllenhaal’s “The Bride!” quickly rights these wrongs, opening with the author herself, alone in a void, furious and repressed, played by Jessie Buckley. She tells the audience “Frankenstein” barely scratched her itch, and she had a lot more to say. So Mary Shelley takes demonic possession of Ida (also Buckley), a sex worker from the 1930s, who starts screaming in a British accent and exploding with unbridled feminism. This upsets the gangsters who were ogling her, so she winds up hurtling down a staircase, dead as a doornail. That’s where her story begins.
I’m not Mary Shelley’s biographer, so I can’t say if writer/director Gyllenhaal’s interpretation of the author, her philosophies, or her behavior is 100% accurate. But I do know Gyllenhaal is one of the few filmmakers who takes Shelley’s perspectives into serious consideration, and dives headfirst into her novel’s feminist themes. (Let’s play a game: There are nearly 500 films based on “Frankenstein.” Name as many as you can that were directed by a woman. If you remember three, I’m impressed.)
“The Bride!” isn’t so much an adaptation of Shelley’s novel as it is a glorious pastiche, combining elements of “Frankenstein” with gangster pictures, golden age musicals, gothic romance, silent cinema and comic books. In the same chilly breath it invokes Howard Hawks’s “Scarface,” Mel Brooks’s “Young Frankenstein” and Tim Burton’s “Beetlejuice.” You’ll find visual inspiration from F.W. Murnau’s “Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans” and the lowdown scuzz works of Frank Henenlotter. It’s a monstrous Hollywood production with a fiery independent spirit. It’s hard not to love this messed up, messy movie.
Back to the story: The Frankenstein Monster (Christian Bale), who lets you call him “Frankenstein,” has been wandering the Earth, a lonely virgin, for over 100 years. He finally turns to a mad scientist, Dr. Euphronious (Annette Bening), to make him a girlfriend. So they dig up Ida’s corpse. Frank, shy even around her dead body, gets cold feet and says she’s too pretty for him, Euphronious brings her to life anyway. Ida can’t remember her past life, Mary Shelley only has sporadic control over their shared, mangled body, and they both get to living as hard and fast as possible.
When two a-holes attempt to assault The Bride, Frankenstein murders them. Now they’re on the lam, crime spreeing across the country like “Zombie & Clyde,” stealing money (and the movie) and inspiring American women to imitate The Bride by adopting her signature look and running wild in the streets, doing crimes and screaming, “Brain attack!”
And what a brain attack this is. Gyllenhaal’s film is an inspired assault on the senses, a furious miasma of creativity and gall. Buckley anchors this thing, delivering a full and nuanced performance which also requires — nay, demands — that she run rampant, like the Batman villain version of Steve Martin and Lily Tomlin in “All of Me.” Buckley goes a big as she can go, often hitting the stratosphere, and her work is invigorating.
It’s up to Christian Bale to keep this movie grounded, balancing Buckley’s bravura with a soulful, pained performance that ranks among the best interpretations of the Frankenstein Monster. Meanwhile, Buckley is officially the ultimate version of the Bride of Frankenstein, but to be fair she had little competition. Mary Shelley’s novel never actually brought The Bride to life, and even James Whale’s classic “Bride of Frankenstein” only introduced her at the end, for a few fleeting moments. Elsa Lanchester’s striking, bird-like portrayal became iconic, and graced merchandise for many decades, but she only made one official appearance. (Franc Roddam’s 1985 quasi-sequel “The Bride,” starring Jennifer Beals and Sting, gave it a try but … well, let’s just say they tried.)
“The Bride!” makes up for a lot of that lost time. Gyllenhaal crams a ton of inspiration into her monstrous masterwork, especially in the first half, which is so unabashedly alive that the second half can’t quite keep up. The movie ultimately settles into a relatively straightforward undead cops-and-robbers plot, which is involving and strong, but the phantasmagoric first half is where most of the magic happens.
The good news, for a lot of people, is that Gyllenhaal just made your new favorite movie. The bad news is … hang on, let me see if I can find any … no, I got nothing. There is no bad news. You can’t even complain when everyone dresses like The Bride next Halloween, since Gyllenhaal thought ahead and made “everyone dresses like The Bride” into a plot point. If you find another Bride at a party it’s not embarrassing, it’s a perfect photo op. “The Bride!” really is the gift that keeps on giving.
