The Bride! Review

The Bride! is an Ambitious Frankenstein of a Movie That Struggles to Hold Itself Together

By: Marc Kozak

The Bride!

The Bride! is an Ambitious Frankenstein of a Movie That Struggles to Hold Itself Together

By: Marc Kozak

Here’s an incredibly cynical take for you: it seems like we’ve gotten to the point where all of the timeless and universally recognizable stories have already been adapted and/or remade (sometimes more than once). The new way to utilize existing IP (because we have to keep utilizing existing IP) is to “reimagine” an existing story through a modern lens or tell the same story from the perspective of a secondary character. This has been happening for some time, especially in the book world – consider the popularity of things like Madeline Miller’s The Song of Achilles and Circe, Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea, Geraldine Brooks’ March, and countless others.

Recently, it seems like movies have caught on to the tactic. The Ugly Stepsister and even Hamnet are two very recent examples (both adapted from existing written stories themselves), and I am predicting that there are many more on the way. I’m not saying there isn’t any value in telling a story in this manner – I’m just saying it could be a trend that the bigger studios will jump on in order to keep repackaging the properties that they own.

Regardless of the reasons behind its origins, Maggie Gyllenhaal’s The Bride! is one of the more audacious examples of remixing a classic work to reflect modern attitudes. Drawing inspiration from both Mary Shelley's 1818 novel Frankenstein and the 1935 film Bride of Frankenstein, Gyllenhaal imagines a scenario in which Frankenstein’s monster is still alive and kicking in 1930s Chicago, and has sought out a mad scientist to create a companion for him after more than a century of loneliness. The ambition here is to give more life and agency to Frankenstein’s bride, a character not really given much attention in previous works. However, Gyllenhaal isn’t content to stop there – she swings for multiple fences, cramming in so many different styles, tones, subplots, and filmic homages that the movie is under constant threat of collapsing (and it sometimes does). It’s a batshit mishmash of ideas that is admirable in its ambition and often very fun to watch, but the many different parts aren’t quite successful in coalescing into a satisfying whole.

" The Bride! is a batshit mishmash of ideas that is admirable in its ambition and often very fun to watch, but the many different parts aren’t quite successful in coalescing into a satisfying whole. "

Christian Bale plays Frankenstein’s monster – or “Frank” – as a soft-spoken, almost bashful creature, dressed elegantly and obsessed with the movies. He models himself after his hero, matinee idol Ronnie Reed (Jake Gyllenhaal, amusingly used for some ballroom dancing sequences), and believes that he needs a mate to make his life complete. After reading about the controversial reanimation work of Dr. Cornelia Euphronius (Annette Bening, truly understanding what kind of movie she’s in), Frank pays her a visit to see if she can help him. They choose a recently deceased corpse and successfully revive her, but she loses her memory in the process, allowing them to convince her that she is Frank’s bride.

Jessie Buckley is given a spectacularly difficult role as The Bride, and for the most part, she handles it with an uninhibited confidence that provides the movie with much of its spark. Dressed by legendary costume designer Sandy Powell in an electrocuted goth style that is half Cruella de Vil, half Harley Quinn, and given an inky facial scar that completes a unique and imitable look, the Bride is a character certain to be seen at upcoming Halloween parties.

To make things even more complicated, the movie’s opening scene shows us that the Bride was formerly a woman named Ida, who becomes possessed by the spirit of the deceased author Mary Shelley in order to facilitate the story she really wanted to tell, but could not due to her own demise. Shelley’s spirit takes over at random times throughout the movie, which mostly means that the Bride suddenly shouts random gibberish or strings of literary synonyms in a different accent. It’s a device perhaps intended to also give agency to the female author of Frankenstein, who maybe had “other, better stories to tell,” instead of one about the unchecked ambition of men. It’s a nice idea, but it does not work at all in execution. Had this particular device stopped after the opening scene, it might’ve made a bit more sense and been a fun narrative quirk, but ghost Shelley’s repeated interruptions add nothing to the story or the character and are an unwelcome distraction throughout.

Despite Buckley being asked to be several different people all at once, she holds things together well enough to make the Bride a compelling and sympathetic character. She is troubled by her lack of memory regarding her previous life but still moves through life unapologetically, drawn to the seedier and more rebellious elements of the city. She is brash and loud, often screaming at the top of her lungs, angry at her situation and the world at large, the kind of woman sadly labeled as “difficult” in this day and age.

The movie’s feminist ideology seems content to stay at a super high level, possibly because there is just way too much going on. Too many worthy themes are introduced and fail to develop into anything sophisticated. Femicide and its lack of attention given by police swirls throughout but never goes anywhere interesting. The Bride states that she doesn’t want her new life to be defined by Frank’s desire for a mate, but basically follows him around for the rest of the movie. Even Frank hiding the Bride’s true past is mostly overlooked in favor of the two continuing a relationship built on a lie (even after he comes clean). Men who act cartoonishly abhorrent are dealt with in cartoonishly violent ways. The dialogue is often so ham-fisted that it often feels like a joke (at one point, the Bride yells “me too!”). In a scene that has drawn the movie unfavorable comparisons to The Joker, women inspired by the Bride’s activities dress up like her and take to the streets for an impromptu riot, humping car windshields and screaming catchphrases. The thematic material feels not only dated but reduced to obvious sloganeering; not something that is particularly useful in advancing an important conversation.

Another subplot involves two detectives (Peter Sarsgaard and Penélope Cruz) chasing Frank and the Bride around the country. These two characters get way too much screen time, all in an effort to (repeatedly) tell us that men often claim credit for the work that women do. Their activities dovetail slightly into yet another undercooked subplot about a local mob boss trying to silence the Bride because she knows about his criminal activities.

Visually, it’s an impressive production, with tons of winks and nods toward various moments in film history. Frank and the Bride crisscross the country while on the run from police, evoking such classics as True Romance and Bonnie and Clyde. The 1930s film noir atmosphere is colorfully rendered with wonderful costuming and steamy city streets. A giddily silly dance routine to “Puttin’ on the Ritz” is a charming homage to 1974’s Young Frankenstein. Jake Gyllenhaal’s character is a tribute to the movies of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, while other characters seem to riff on The Rocky Horror Picture Show. These parts of the movie are a lot of fun, and a nice way to acknowledge the many Frankenstein-adjacent projects that have popped up in Hollywood over the years.

For all of Maggie Gyllenhaal’s good intentions, The Bride! struggles to form a coherent statement. It almost gets by on the sheer magnitude of its stylistic ambitions and the total commitment of its actors, but it's just a bit too narratively messy to really work. But maybe its messiness is part of Gyllenhaal’s overall point; as she put it, “I think so many women are told that we’re too much, over and over again, from the moment we get here.” The Bride! is a little bit too much of everything, except maybe the interiority of its main character, whom we end up knowing frustratingly too little about. It’s a voice the movie needed more of, but one that simply got lost underneath the rest of the noise.