Director: Haifaa al-Mansour
Cast: Elle Fanning, Douglas Booth, Maisie Williams, Stephen Dillane
Have I Seen it Before: Never. Until stumbling upon it at the Library, I hadn’t even known the film existed.
Did I Like It: The biopic will often leave me feeling wanting. While following the tropes of the genre, I feel like I will get more out of reading a biography about the subject. The only exception I can readily reach for is Man on the Moon (1999) and Walk the Line (2006), but both of those had something else going for them.
In this case, everything is done correctly. The production value is high, and I buy the nineteenth century setting. I feel like it might very well pass the bar where—if viewed in years to come—it will not be immediately apparent when the film was made, although I also grant that timeless quality can’t really be passed until some actual time has passed. Fanning plays the role with assuredness that makes it clear she isn’t the problem with the film.
But there isn’t anything additional to the film to recommend it. There is a bland sameness to the proceedings, and even the passion Shelley must have felt in the creation of her most famous work comes across as tepid. There are plenty of great films about the act of writing that stick with you long after they stop. This isn’t one of them, sadly. It’s not hard to imagine why the film didn’t come across hardly anyones radar.
It does introduce an odd desire in me that I’ve never experienced with a biopic before. I did go out and but a written biography of her, sure. But I also had the strongest urge to re-watch Bride of Frankenstein (1935). I’ve never had a biopic push me in the direction of an even sillier version of the story, but I suppose there’s a first time or everything.