Maggie Gyllenhaal’s The Bride! is a big, bold movie that takes a lot of big swings. It didn’t always work for me, and it is a lot, I mean a lot, to take in, but what did work was amazing, and I’m so glad films like this still exist. 

In the original novel, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus the creature longs for a mate, a companion, someone he can spend time with and who will not be repulsed by him. Victor Frnkenstein begins creating a female creature but destroys it before he brings her life.

Bride of Frankenstein (1935), James Whale’s sequel to his classic adaptation of the story, ponders what would happen if his monster did get a companion. It doesn’t end well. The bride only shows up at the end of the film, and her screen time (played to perfection by Elsa Lanchester) is only a few minutes.

The Bride! lets her live and gives her a modernity not found in any adaptation of the story that I’ve seen. It begins with the book’s author herself, Mary Shelley (Jessie Buckley), dead and stuck in some sort of purgatory. She decries that she had more of the Frankenstein story to tell, but death robbed her of it. So she does what dead authors often do: she possesses the body of a 1920s gangster moll, Ida (also played by Jessie Buckley). 

Buckley’s performance here (and everywhere) is magnificent. As Shelley possesses her, she swings from Ida – brashy with plenty of New York accent and attitude—to Shelly – reserved British accoutrements, but full of anger and resentment. At first she struggles with keeping her thoughts and voice under control. She repeats words and phrases and winds up spilling the beans on the mob boss.  This last bit gets her thrown down a flight of stairs to her death.

Enter Frankenstein (Christian Bale). Yes, technically he’s Frankenstein’s monster, as Frankenstein was the mad scientist. The film acknowledges this but still allows the monster to call himself Frank anyway.  He finds Dr. Cornelia Euphronius (Annette Benning), who has been working on the reanimating of dead flesh. He tells her he wants a companion. They dig up Ida and reanimate her.

The process leave her with blood stains across her face and her hair strays straight up in a way that makes her look vaguely like the Bride in James Whale’s film.

Frank is obsessed with an actor (played by Jake Gyllenhaal), and he takes Ida to see all his movies. After watching one of them, they go to a vaguely queer underground party that feels like it belongs in the 1970s or ’80s, something from Studio 54 perhaps, not 1920s New York City.  Or perhaps not. What do I know about underground parties in the 1920s? I know very little about regular parties of today. I’m such a homebody.

They dance wildly, and it is in these moments that I enjoyed it most. The early parts of the film have this wonderful energy about them. They feel joyous and electric. Later the film will get bogged down in its plot and its deeper meaning, and I didn’t enjoy it nearly as much. 

After the dance, Ida is assaulted by some dudes. Frank intervenes, brutally killing them. This brings police detective Jake Wiles (Peter Sarsgaard) onto the case, and with him, his assistant Myrna Malloy (Penelope Cruz). She’s really the brains of the outfit (and yes, her name is awfully close to Myrna Loy, the classic film actress, and that surely isn’t a coincidence. This film is stuffed to the gills with those kinds of things.)

Myrna is the real brains of the operation, but she can’t be a detective because she’s a lady. The film will use this to make several nods to sexism and the like, which mostly didn’t work for me. I’m pro-feminism and equal rights, but the film doesn’t really dig deeply into that angle. Instead it just sort of nods to it, and expects us to cheer when she does make detective, gets sneered at by a bunch of redneck cops, and still saves the day.  It is one of many thematic strands that don’t get much attention. The film is trying to do so much, and it just doesn’t have the time to give some of them the time they need.

Frank and Ida are now on the lam, crisscrossing the country, going wherever one of those movies is playing. When watching one of those films, Frank often imagines himself and Ida on the screen doing those dances, singing those songs.  

Bonnie and Clyde is the clear influence on this film, but it also references things as diverse as Wild at Heart, classic song and dance movies like Top Hat, the films of Ingmar Bergman, Thelma and Louise, Metropolis, and so much more. Gyllenhaal clearly has a lot on her mind, and she’s trying to do it all in this film. Amazingly, most of it works. And even when it doesn’t, I admire the ambition.

It does start to run out of steam toward the end. I had a lot more fun watching these two run around the country getting into trouble while pursued by the cops than I did watching them try and figure out who they are and what it means to be alive. 

I suspect this will be a film that will grow on me in time. Further viewings will allow me to take more of it in and enjoy it.  But until then I can say I loved how big it swung and how hard it tried.