Mary Shelley
Electric Dreams
released 3 september 2018 | 12 | Dvd Director Haifaa al-mansour Cast elle Fanning, maisie Williams, douglas Booth, Joanne Froggatt
It’s been 200 years since the first publication of Frankenstein, but the life of Mary Shelley still resonates strongly with young women. In Haifaa al-Mansour’s biopic, it’s easy to see why. Like a modern girl in an outdated world, Elle Fanning’s Mary is romantic and headstrong, curious about the forbidden, and fighting the suffocating embrace of her father.
Unfortunately this new biopic isn’t the celebration Mary deserves. Choosing to focus more on her romance with Percy Bysshe Shelley than her artistic impulses, the film unintentionally belittles her creation. And while it does look lovely, cloaked in grey mist and the dying leaves of graveyards, this can only momentarily distract from how disappointing it is.
What’s worse, the Romantic poets that Mary meets are truly awful. Perhaps it was intentional to demystify famous men, but Douglas Booth’s Shelley is so smug and self-righteous you wonder how Mary could ever fall for him. A heavily eyelinered Lord Byron is even worse, galavanting around his Swiss chateau like a pantomime prince, undermining Mary at every turn. How unjust, when Mary’s novel has arguably been more influential than any verse penned by these men.
Extras A Making Of and interviews with the director, cast and crew. Kimberley Ballard
When al-Mansour was shooting her first film in Saudi Arabia, she had to direct outdoor scenes while hiding in a van.