Mary Shelley

Seen at the Theatre Royal in Castlemaine, VIC

Cecil says: A second film in a day is a bit like having that second coffee in the morning: the second one has to be really top quality to be satisfying because the first one met the addictive need. 

Sadly, Mary Shelley just wasn’t quite good enough to warrant being our second film, and by the end I was wondering how long there was still left to go, and how many more extra bits they could add to the story.

I wasn’t alone in this, though. The woman next to us got her mobile phone out half way through and began reading stuff off it, much to my annoyance. She moved after a few minutes, but when I glanced back some time later, she was still in the cinema, on the back row and still on her phone.

So that’s at least two of us who thought Mary Shelley wasn’t as gripping as we had hoped.

I did get caught up a few times, and enjoyed learning about the connections between Shelley and Byron, Shelley and Wollstonecroft, and even to learn that Mary Shelley was with the poet Shelley and took his name. I must admit I hadn’t even known that beforehand.

But somehow it didn’t retain my attention. I found myself observing the action on the screen, wondering why this felt like a 6^th form end-of-year production (was it the hair, the look, the acting, the script?); wondering if it would have worked better as an 8-part TV drama? And wishing they’d just get on with producing Frankenstein!!

Byron was the worst, somehow. Felt a bit like someone trying to be Alan Rickman in Robin Hood. All evil and doing terrible deeds.

The process of writing was interesting. How an idea is born and how it takes on a concrete form with characters and plot developing as you experience things in life.

It was tragic how all these talented (if aimless) people died so young, and extraordinary that most of the things that happened to them happened in their teens. Maybe that’s why it felt like that 6^th form production. They were all supposed to be 6^th form age…

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Bea says: A very interesting story, which despite having a degree in English Literature I knew precious little about - like Cecil I hadn't even realised that the "Shelley" in her name was from the poet Shelley, and certainly had no idea her mother was Mary Wollstonecraft! 

The story was strong enough for me to remain interested; but again, as Cecil says, it did rather feel like a 6th form play (I suspect the makeup and costume designers might have been young...).  Certainly made the whole Romantic poets thing look a lot less romantic; and didn't bear comparison with On Chesil Beach, which we had seen right before.

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