Maggie Gyllenhaal’s “The Bride!” is a maximalist monstrosity, a jangily and untenable mess of mismatched parts both rotting and ill-conceived that cannot decide on one strong story, so instead steals the fetid leavings from several dozen others. It is a film that feels equally overcooked and underthought, rife with reshoots and sequences of clearly added dialogue that indicate a filmmaker hoping to wrangle an unmoored narrative into submission. Earnest yet lacking in any sense of introspection, this modern “Bride of Frankenstein” riff believes itself to be a bolt of feminist revolution in goth garb that can’t contend with how goofy its need to say something that penetrates culture actually comes across; a psychosexual monster mash that dares to end its final moments with the literal “Monster Mash”. And yet…there is something truly charming, nay commendable, in the swing of Gyllenhaal, who clearly aims to paint the town black using the macabre legends that the movies have rendered immortal to craft, in equal measure, a screed against the patriarchy, a revisionist view of Mary Shelley, a Bonnie and Clyde-style lovers on the run story, a borderline musical with several manic dance sequences, and a love letter to cinema as a power capable of exhuming the soul of a monster. As unserious as a cancer joke and as clear eyed as a schizophrenic off their meds, “The Bride!” feels like the unholy creation of a filmmaker given the reins to tell an unwieldy story with half-baked ideas on a grand scale while failing to connect on almost every dramatic level in a manner that feels intentionally obtuse; an Abby-Normal curiosity worthy of dissection on Dr. Frankenstein’s slab.
“The Bride!” opens with Mary Shelley (Recent Oscar Nominee Jessie Buckley) in the black void of eternity, speaking to us from beyond the grave. She informs us that death came for her before she was able to give us the story she always intended to tell, the sequel to her most titanic work, “Frankenstein,” something angrier, more pointed, and decidedly female. As Shelley narrates, we see a young sex worker in 1930’s Chicago named Ida (also Jessie Buckley) being accosted in a restaurant by the underlings of a gangster. In a fit of supernaturally instigated mania, we watch as Shelley possesses Ida. Enraptured by the new life she has overtaken, Shelley uses Ida’s mouth to speak insults and witticisms at the assembled crime figures before being ushered outside and, accidentally, shoved down a flight of stairs. Subsequently, Ida is dead and buried in a pauper’s grave. Meanwhile, Frank (Christian Bale as the literal Frankenstein’s Monster) arrives at the door of the world’s resident “Mad Scientist” Dr. Euphronius (Annette Benning) begging her to help him create a mate. His life of endless wandering has left him listless and lonely, in need of something like him to share his misery with. The good doctor and Frank soon dig up a random grave, which happens to be that of Ida, and bring her back to life using the electrical grid of the modern American city. Returned from the dead, Ida, now The Bride, remembers nothing of her previous life before; she doesn’t even remember dying. As her newly animated body is overtaken periodically by the vinegar-spewing Shelley, The Bride is flung headfirst into existence and ready to consummate her newfound affection for it, finding a joy in rampant sexuality and profanity that Frank is pleasently bemused by. But when a pair of drunken yokels pick a fight with the wrong kind-hearted monster, Frank and The Bride are forced to go on the run as fugitives from justice while the legend of their crusade against the atrocities of men spreads like wildfire across the country, electrifying the female populace to righteous revolution.
The film eschews logic at every turn, which is frankly the only way to really engage with its wacky story. For example, we are presented with Mary Shelly as existing in a sort of purgatory, a specter eager to return to the light of life. And yet, the universe that she is intruding upon is, seemingly, one where the events of her story are true; where Frank has led a traumatic life stalked by generation after generation of torch and pitchfork-bearing peasants. The facts of Dr. Frankenstein’s experiments are well known, at least by Dr. Euphronius, and easily replicable with very little notice; so, is this a fictional reality from Mary’s imagination or the real one where Mary existed, positing that her story was actually a factual accounting of true events? This does not even dig into the barrel of worms that is the relationship between Mary and The Bride, with one possessing the other, leading to her untimely demise and electroshock resurrection. Was this Mary’s plan? How could it have been, considering Frank and the Doctor did not know the grave they would be digging up? Frank even wants to abort their plans when he sees how beautiful Ida’s corpse is, so it’s not as if he chose her. The only way this makes sense is if the film is a story becoming manifest by Shelley herself, though the movie doesn’t really settle on that conclusion either. There is an interesting dynamic with the duality of The Bride and Shelley, as Gyllenhaal casts Buckley in both roles as a literal homage to the same dual casting that James Whale utilized in “The Bride of Frankenstein” (Elsa Lancaster in the original film). The coin flip nature of The Bride, part 30’s woman and part undead nineteenth-century literary genius, is intriguing but unkempt, a firehose left to blast without a sure hand to aim it. And it’s also quite odd for a movie that is textually about women reclaiming their autonomy from an oppressive society run by men to never contend with the fact that Ida was forcibly manipulated into becoming the undead Bride by Mary Shelley herself, a corruption of consent that the movie never bothers to flirt with. These contradictions and logic holes are the muck that the first thirty minutes of the so of the film are forced to wade through as it tries desperately to kickstart the groaning narrative to full power. For a moment, it felt as if the rest of the film, much like the lonely life of Frank, would stretch on into an unknowable and unbearable eternity of suffering without easy reprieve or the sweet release of death. And then the “Puttin’ On The Ritz” sequence begins.
“The Bride!” unabashedly references pretty much every other major movie version of “Frankenstein”, including “Young Frankenstein”. Perhaps the funniest movie ever made, Mel Brooks’ fawning ode to the classic Universal Monster films is known for its silly slapstick, endlessly quotable retorts, and the “Puttin On The Ritz” sequence where Gene Wilder’s Dr. Frankenstein takes his Creation (Peter Boyle) on stage and performs a soft shoe performance complete with top hat and tails. It’s an iconic sequence and an undersung moment in the cinematic history of Shelley’s monster. Gyllenhall, once again leaning into the kitchen sink nature of her storytelling, unleashes a full-on dance number smack in the middle of the film with Frank and The Bride essentially possessing an entire party of well-dressed dandies into almost Thriller-esque choreography. The scene does not play as a fantasy or dream sequence, which have been prevalent in the film throughout, but instead as a literal manifestation of Frank and The Bride’s burgeoning love jolted to life through movement and song as they snarl and slide across the dance floor, baring their teeth with malice at the assembled aristocracy. If the first section of the film left me confused and a bit annoyed, by the time Bale bellows to the rafters, “PUTTIN’ ON THE RITZ,” any concerns about plot and logic were thrown out the window because clearly the film cared not for any of it. To put this much absurdity on screen in such a purposeful way is not the accidental choice of a flailing creation, but an intentional, if tangled, vision that one cannot help but respect. If the rest of the film never lives up to the phantasmagoric glee of that one sequence, at the very least “The Bride!” has shown its cards for what they are, five of a kind where the game is made up and the points don’t matter. Does that make “The Bride!” a good film? Certainly not. But it certainly makes it a memorable one, and that has to count for something.
“The Bride!” is a dynamite disaster, an object of unending fascination and bafflement that doesn’t seem to care if you understand it or not. I am loath to believe in the “turn your brain off and enjoy it” perspective when it comes to even the silliest of movies, and that is not my recommendation for this film. If anything, I say lean in, dig through the fly-ridden guts that Maggie Gyllenhaal presents as so much foie gras, and see if you can’t find some diamonds amongst such cadaverous carnality.
At the very least, enjoy the mash… the Monster Mash.
You’ll be glad you did.
“The Bride!” is playing at The Broad Theater, Prytania Theater Uptown, and Prytania Theatres at Canal Place.