Well executed, moderately interesting
The author of the classic gothic horror novel Frankenstein is a worthy cinematic subject.
The story of a scientist who reanimates a creature made up of parts of dead bodies has had an enormous impact on culture up to modern times. So it’s even more extraordinary that the author was a young woman in the early years of the 19th century who wrote it on a dare issued by the rich and licentious Lord Byron.
Director Haifaa al-Mansour gets a lot of things right, recreating the period detail — including London street scenes — as well as costumes and hair styles in exacting detail.
Casting is similarly adept. Elle Fanning is very fine in the lead role, playing a capable and determined woman ahead of her time in terms of her ideas about feminism and “free love.” (Shelley’s late mother provided much of her inspiration.) Douglas Booth plays her paramour (and later husband), poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, with similar conviction. He’s rather a rake, a handsome one at that, who seems to love the near rock star status he enjoys. Tom Sturridge is also very good as Byron, a rich, dissolute and arrogant jerk, and Stephen Dillane deserves praise for his portrait of William Godwin, Mary’s scholarly father.
The script, co-written by al-Mansour, seeks to hive closely to the historical facts, which is always a good thing. But the story, divided between Mary’s life before and after meeting Shelley and the writing of the novel (and the effort it took for Mary to get credit for it), loses its way somewhere in the middle and never quite recovers its momentum.
The movie is still well executed but, at two hours, not even Fanning’s persuasive performance can elevate it to being more than a moderately interesting historical drama.