I Mos Def Prefer
Maggie Gyllenhaal takes the year’s biggest, messiest swing so far. Sorry, Emerald.
The Bride!
Director: Maggie Gyllenhaal • Writer: Maggie Gyllenhaal, based on the book by Mary Shelley
Starring: Jessie Buckley, Christian Bale, Peter Sarsgaard, Penélope Cruz, Jake Gyllenhaal,
USA • 2hrs 6mins
Opens Hong Kong March 5 • IIB
Grade: B+
Is history about to repeat itself? Last year at roughly this time, Sinners had some pundits doing backflips to say the film wasn’t really a hit, that’s its budget (a rumoured US$90 million) prevented that and oh my god, Ryan Coogler dared to ask to reclaim the rights to his own work a couple of decades from now. Sinners isn’t alone. A few years earlier Crazy Rich Asians had everyone holding their breath: If this flops, what happens to Asian and Asian diaspora films then? And by modern movie economics that was a cheapie (US$30 million). Last year the news that Maggie Gyllenhaal’s The Bride! was pushed back to this year, to today actually, was greeted with all manner of think pieces, like this dude’s, which starts by saying, “This is a very bad sign.” How dare Gyllenhaal ask for a budget like Coogler’s. Are you sensing a pattern here?
The Bride! isn’t as focused and metaphorical as Sinners but it’s a gloriously chaotic, frantic, sick-and-tired feminist howl that DGAF about its flaws, and just barrels ahead, delivering its message with the gossamer delicacy of a cudgel. Ripping up Mary Shelley’s original text and using it more as a springboard for airing her (and 51% of the world’s) grievances through a literary 19th century filter, The Bride! resets the action in 1936 mobland Chicago, where Frank (Christian Bale, whose stepmom is Gloria Steinem, just sayin’), the now hundred-something year old creature, drops in on mad scientist Dr Euphronious (Annette Bening) and asks her to make him a companion. He’s lonely. He’s been out there a long time. She agrees, and reanimates murdered gangster party girl Ida (Oscar frontrunner Jessie Buckley) and it’s off to the violent races with Derek Jarman, Peter Greenaway, Stephen Sondheim, classic MGM musicals, gothic horror, gothic romance, Bonnie and Clyde, #MeToo, Julie Taymor, dream ballet … It’s a lot. The Bride! is a lot. And I’m here for it.
“The motherfucking bride”
At times The Bride! can feel like the work of theatre nerds and art school kids who hoovered up Women’s Studies 101 and Musical Theatre 201 texts and now they’re busy Making Statements, and in some ways it can be seen as the gender binary companion to Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein from last year. The distinguising factor is that The Bride! has a fiery passion that del Toro talked about but didn’t put on the screen. Another film The Bride! recalls, left field though it may be, is Mohammad Rasoulof’s The Seed of the Sacred Fig. Hear me out. After years of making films about Iran’s authoritarian regimes and the violence it perpetrates on average Iranians with graceful allegories, Rasoulof threw up his hands with Sacred Fig and said, “Fuck it. I’ve had it with tiptoeing. Here!” and dispensed with metaphors entirely. The Bride! is every bit as unsubtle; Gyllenhaal ain’t got time for this shit anymore. After Ida is reanimated as The Bride and, it must be noted, possessed by the furious spirit of Frankenstein author Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, her clarion call becomes a simple “I would prefer not to,” the unspoken wish of millions of women every day for a million reasons. I told you: cudgel.
References aside, The Bride! is entirely original. Frank is delighted to meet Ida, but she’s resistant, the spectre of Ida’s life before lingering somewhere in her subconcious and Shelley’s raging – shot in lush black and white – muddying the waters. Before long, though, it’s game recognise monster game: Frank loses control of his beastly side (Bale is very good at being suddenly threatening), The Bride inspires a cult of angry women to finally speak – and act – on their anger, and they’re on the run. While Frank and The Bride chase down showings of his idol Ronnie Reed’s (Jake Gyllenhaal) musicals across the American midwest, detectives Jake Wiles (Peter Sarsgaard, AKA Mr Gyllenhaal) and Myrna Mallow (Penélope Cruz) chase them. No surprise, Myrna is the smart one.
Gyllenhaal’s tapped not just her family, but a murderer’s row of technical talent to pull all this off, including BAFTA and Oscar-winning costume designer Sandy Powell (Velvet Goldmine, The Favourite), production design by Karen Murphy (A Star is Born, Queen & Slim, which is all over this movie), and DOP Lawrence Sher, who shot both of Todd Phillips’ Joker films and who adds a touch of those films’ anarchy, but ditches the smug petulance of Folie à Deux. All of it is in service to Buckley, reuniting with Gyllenhaal after her intimate, interalised debut The Lost Daughter, who chews absolutely everything within arm’s reach. But she and Gyllenhaal are keenly attuned to when to turn it down, like a key beat in the grandiose ballroom shootout where The Bride clocks Wiles, a small, critical beat in a big scene. Or when Ida’s first inhabited by Shelley in between moments channelling OG Bride Elsa Lanchester (sorry, Jennifer Beals), her confusion at what’s happening is palpable. Trying to reclaim her identity, any identity, in the car with Frank is heartbreaking. It’s Buckley’s film, but she gets a great assist from Cruz, who turns Myrna’s frustration into a smooth, continental boredom with the misogyny around her that she knows precisely how to manage – though she’d prefer not to have to.
A friend once agreed that Folie à Deux was a steaming pile, but he was nonetheless happy the steaming pile existed on a filmmaking level; at least it had a POV. The Bride! has some clunky dialogue and takes its share of narrative leaps, tonal whiplashes and character shortcuts, but it’s far from a steaming pile – though it’s mos def headed for “Love it!” and “Hate it!” duality – so at a time when movies and filmmakers refuse to (or are advised against) making a statement of any kind, I for one am so, so happy it got brought to life. Sorry. Couldn’t resist.