MARY SHELLEY
Godwin’s lore
released 6 July 12a | 121 minutes
Director Haifaa al-Mansour Cast elle Fanning, Maisie Williams, Ben Hardy, douglas Booth
The story behind Mary Shelley’s creation of Frankenstein should be the fuel for a dramatic, passionate coming-of-age story with a well-drawn heroine at its centre. Sadly, with Mary Shelley, what we find instead is a plain, generic period drama that only occasionally sparks into life, mostly through the performances of its leads.
Haunted by death and recrimination in her family life, the events that informed Shelley’s gift for descriptive narrative are presented here basically, with leaden foreshadowing (Stephen Dillane, as Mary’s father, encourages her at one point to “find your own voice”) and there’s much lingering on crackling tongues of electrical energy as Percy (Douglas Booth) and Mary (Elle Fanning) attend a galvanisation demonstration. But if you expected the film to peel back the characters’ layers and explore anything new about their lives, chances are you’ll come out feeling disappointed.
It’s as if the main story beats are items to be checked off on a list; a gothic country manor here, a raging Scottish storm there. There is a great film to be made of Percy and Mary’s relationship and the birth of one of the most iconic stories of folly and fear. This, unfortunately, isn’t it. Jim Blakey
‘80s movies Gothic, Haunted Summer and Rowing With The Wind all tackled the 1816 gathering that sparked the novel.