‘Shelley’ lacking drama, insight
As stiff British dramas about literary figures go, “Mary Shelley” has its good points. She had interesting parents, an interesting life, an interesting boyfriend, and she wrote “Frankenstein,” which, in terms of cultural penetration, makes her the most successful writer in her circle of acquaintances. People who have never read a poem by Lord Byron or Percy Shelley know her monster.
But with a biographical movie, information alone isn’t enough. If we just want to know the details, we could read a Wikipedia entry. If we just want to watch a show about Mary Shelley, a documentary might be preferable. From a narrative feature, we want drama and illumination, the truths that go beyond the plain facts.
That’s where “Mary Shelley” comes up a bit short. It’s never less than competent and intelligent, and here and there it’s better than that. Stephen Dillane plays Mary’s father, the philosopher William Godwin, and he owns every scene he’s in. And Douglas Booth — who played Romeo in Carlo Carlei’s disastrous “Romeo and Juliet” — makes a dashing yet vulnerable Shelley. But I’m sorry, I just can’t buy that Elle Fanning wrote “Frankenstein.” And I really did try.
Fanning has two main modes here as Mary, either to look big-eyed and confused or to look disillusioned and outraged; and these modes carry her through most of the performance. These are not bad modes, but they pretty much lock her into playing Mary as someone from 2018, who was kidnapped into a time machine, forced to wear period clothes and told that the only way she gets to leave Regency England is to learn a British accent. Again, she’s not bad, or even close to bad, but she doesn’t seem of the world.
A major through line is Mary’s desire to write, which Fanning and director Haifaa Al-Mansour interpret as Mary’s need to prove herself, which is an external goal, something that she wants to see happen in the world. But the inner element, which admittedly is much harder to convey, is neglected or at least doesn’t come across. There’s nothing internal about Fanning’s performance to suggest that Mary is an artist with something she needs to say and that must be said.
Still, the British landscapes are attractive, and the historical figures have a built-in fascination, so that anyone who really wants to see this movie probably will walk out vaguely pleased. The movie’s approach to Byron’s friend Dr. John Polidori (Ben Hardy) is especially intriguing. Director Ken Russell presented him as a nut job in the great 1986 film “Gothic,” but here he’s the kindest and most normal person Mary knows. It’s about time someone was nice to this young man, who committed suicide in 1821 at age 25.