In 1940’s Chicago, Frankenstein’s monster convinces Dr. Euphronius to make him a companion, sparking an insane romance for the ages and a Bonnie-and-Clyde-like rampage for our anti-heroes!
You know how in more traditional weddings, part of the vows usually includes, ‘Til death do us part’? Well, what happens if you’re already dead? Yes, Frankie still moves and talks his scarred and stapled self, but he is clearly a self-aware monster, and sadly because of this, he is desperately, achingly, torturously lonely. Skin hunger is a very real thing; babies will absolutely die from a lack of human skin-to-skin contact, so imagine what chance monster Frankie has in the face of that. He wants, he desires, he needs a companion, a specially-made woman just for him. Who would gain-say him that? But the Bride is no empty marionette dancing to someone elses tune, she has needs of her own. Make sure your derringer is in your garter and your black lipstick is in place, and off we go!
We actually begin, appropriately enough, with the ghost of Mary Shelley, the author of the OG ‘Frankenstein’ story, she who sported a prodigious vocabulary and was considered unique among her peers, the woman who changed the face of both the Sci-Fi and Horror genres as we know them today. Shelley never got to tell the story of Frankenstein in its entirety, and so her ghost elects to jettison herself from wherever she’s been languishing, into the body of a woman known as Ida, at least at the beginning of our story, to do just that.
Poor Ida (Jessie Buckley) was just doing her job, entertaining gangsters in the restaurant as they slug down alcohol and try to act respectable, all while proving their manhood by insisting Ida eat the oyster she clearly despises. When suddenly Mary Shelley (also Jessie Buckley) rises from within and Ida is now arguing with herself in a gorgeous Gollum-style performance that involves shrieking, standing on tables, and in general making a loud spectacle of herself. But when Lupino, the notorious mob boss ‘round these parts, orders Ida thrown out and Ida is instead thrown down the stairs, a tragic but opportunistic death occurs.
Scene Cut to – the infamous Dr. Euphronius (Annette Benning), bemused and still in her striped pajamas, is being asked by a pleading, monstrous man-shape (Christian Bale) to make him a companion, a woman to ease his bruising loneliness. And it just so happens that a freshly-dead womans corpse was introduced to the paupers grave quite recently, so like the OG Baron in his mad genius, Frank and the Doc go grave-robbing.
So what did dear Frankie do while he was waiting for the means to make his companion to arrive? As one might expect, Frankenstein loves movies. Specifically, the entire theater-going experience, where Frankie can sit in the dark, surrounded by humanity and easily accepted as one of them, and experience the absolute magic of a 1940’s style musical, replete with singing and dancing in black and white and silver tones. Frankie has a real adoration for the Ronnie Reed (Jake Gyllenhaal) movies, as the movie star overcame physical deformities from an early age and went on to superstardom as an adult, never letting his physicality or the depreciating words of others stop him. And really, who doesn’t love an overcoming-impossible-odds story? The entire storyline of Frankie loving movies comprises like more than half the film, and reminds us of the magic and wonder of going out to the cinema, the ticket-taker and the obligatory popcorn and soda, the squeaky seats and the noise of others in the theater, the light that fills your eyes as the curtains open and the screen lights up, all of that. We needed reminding, and the very meta of Frankie in open-mouthed wonder at the theater while we the audience are goggling him from our own theater, is wonderfully ironic. We even get a dance number, to what is arguably Frankenstein’s most famous song, out of it!
With the help of Greta (Jeannie Berlin), the Doc has managed to raise up the corpse of a dead woman and make her live again. No stitching together body parts, no stealing a brain in a jar, nope, this is pouring some sort of toxic black concoction to the brim of former Ida, and juicing her up like a frog hooked up to a car battery. As one might expect, since Ida has to have been dead for at least long enough to get her buried, there are some side effects of her “reinvigoration”. A nameless shell with voices bouncing about in the head like pachinko balls is what rises, acting purely on instinct and desire, and what the Bride wants to do right now, is party.
What follows is a night like you would not believe, as the Bride unerringly finds a gangster speakeasy spot and goes to dance her little patootie off, while Frankie looks on with amazement and growing infatuation at his newfound companion. Unfortunately, inevitably, there are men out there who think an apparently inebriated woman living it up on the dance floor is an open invitation to get jiggy with her, whether she wants it or not. Neither Frankenstein’s monster, nor his newly risen good-time gal, are known for any kind of restraint, especially when it comes to self-defense, and so, the bodies begin dropping.
Viewers have been decrying the film for its portrayal of sexual violence and responsive violence, and while yes, the initial curb-stomping scene of Frankie straight up murdering the Bride’s would-be rapists was reminiscent of that scene in American History X and therefore a bit much, there are people (not just women, okay) all over the world who have experienced sexual assault and rape, who would tell you that a curb-stomped death would be too kind and over too fast for their attacker/s. The utter delight in the violent response to these assaults, in a style very reminiscent of Oliver Stone’s incredible film Natural Born Killers, and of course almost inevitably Harley Quinn and her puddin’ Joker, is a catharsis of pent-up rage that we all need right now, even just a little. Who hasn’t imagined taking a baseball bat to the head of some asshat they know at some point in their lives?
Now Frankie and his gal are on the run, and they hop trains and steal cars and leave a trail of dead bodies in their wake. The good-time gal needs a name, and for no apparent reason whatsoever, Frankie dubs her Penelope, aka pretty Penny. (It may be interesting to note that Penelope is the wife of Odysseus from Greek mythology, renowned for her patience and loyalty to her husband.) Frankie gets a neck tat of her new name, and our couple goes on a Bonnie and Clyde-like spree across the Eastern parts of America, chasing the various towns the Ronnie Reed films feature. They eat and drink, they smoke, they scream into the void and they laugh freely, they have plenty of horizontal mambo, and in general our duo live it up as much as possible, tinged with the kind of desperation that comes with the terrible knowledge that this whole party could be over at any moment. And when Penny starts asking Frankie for details of their romance and engagement, mostly involving a ruby ring and a shared love of oysters, we can feel the cracks in their shared adventure widening, almost to the breaking point.
The gangsters have sent their thugs after Ida because of course she knows too much, and also a pair of determined cops, all the way from where things began in Indiana, are after Frankie and Ida too. Jake Wiles (Peter Sarsgaard) is a hard-bitten cop with a ton of hidden guilt when it comes to Ida, and his “secretary” Myrna Mallow (Penelope Cruz) is actually the real brains behind their hidden partnership, since no self-respecting cop of this time would consider a female detective worth anything other than fetching coffee. Once again, the woman behind the man is the actual smarts, and as Frankie and Penny leave behind them a trail of dead terrible men who got exactly what they deserved, their message of repressed feminine rage is beginning to infect the rest of the female populace, like a plague. Women with years if not decades of restrained fury are now donning widows veils, black lipstick like a gunshot on the side of the mouth, and taking up easily-found baseball bats, to take to the streets and mete out some justice of their own, just like her.
The movie is many many things, but one simply cannot ignore all the feminist overtones packed into practically every scene. As The Bride herself would say, I would prefer not to. Core themes like consent and empowerment are explored, but in the most whacked-out musical monster mash setting imaginable. Honestly, the film is everything Joker: Folie aux Deux should have been. What we can take away from it in the end is that, manic pixie goth monster characters aside, The Bride is no-one’s bride, but a separate identity all her own, and she will choose who she will be, thank you very much.
All the actors did a particularly stellar job, but the real lauds have to go to our leads Christian Bale and Jessie Buckley, and Buckley in particular gets extra props and applause, for playing not only director Maggie Gyllenhaal’s very unique take on the Bride of Frankenstein, but also for acting this take on Mary Shelley exquisitely too. The different look of the Bride in the film also has callbacks to the 1930’s movie while embracing a gorgeous, distinctive style all its own. Bale’s Frankie has similar growly tones of his time as tortured Christopher Nolan’s Batman, which is ironic considering both Bale and the director were in what is arguably the best Batman movie of modern times, The Dark Knight.
Do yourself a solid and see The Bride! as it was meant to be seen, in movie theaters now! And don’t forget to say for the excellent mid-credit comeuppance scene!
Reviewed by Alicia Glass