MARY REILLY
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1996 Mark R. Leeper
Capsule: Stevenson's classic of the potential
for evil in us all is transformed into a feminist
diatribe in which all men seem to be selfish and
cruel, while most women are nurturing and victims.
The telling is a dreary and dark twisting of a much
better story. Rating: -1 (-4 to +4)
Robert Louis Stevenson's "Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" was inspired by schizophrenics that Stevenson had studied and also by Edinburgh's notorious Deacon William Brodie--pious churchman and respected councilman by day and house burglar by night. (Jean Brodie claims him as a relative toward the end of the film THE PRIME OF MISS JEAN BRODIE.) Stevenson wanted to write first a horror story and second a parable about the latent beast in all of us. Valerie Martin's novel MARY REILLY retold the story from the point of view of Jekyll's maid, a character whom Stevenson neglected to mention. The newer novel transformed the story into a parable about the latent beast in all men and the cruelty of men toward women, peppering the story with bits of male misogyny from sources having nothing to do with Edward Hyde. Though subtlety was not a great concern of the book, what there was excised by Christopher Hampton's screenplay, directed by Stephen Frears. The resulting film is relentlessly downbeat and dark. It is as dark literally as it is in tone, seemingly set in a London that offers two kinds of weather: night and fog.
Mary Reilly (played by Julia Roberts) is a new housemaid at Dr. Henry Jekyll's household. Jekyll (John Malkovich) takes a particular interest in her for the interesting scars on her arms and neck and later for the unusual fact that she could read. The household is run by the authoritarian and domineering butler Poole who likes Mary even less for the interest that his master shows her. Mary is a gentle sort inordinately bothered by simple everyday household chores like skinning and slicing a live and wriggling eel. The camera shows us this spectacle in loving detail just as it shows us the carcasses of skinned meat hanging in the market street. But in spite of these minor annoyances Mary likes the Jekyll household and receives from Jekyll unexpected kindness, considering that he is a man. It is in fact the only male kindness in the film. So things are really going the best that Mary has ever had them go for her, which is not saying very much. Then one day Jekyll announces that his assistant Edward Hyde (Malkovich) is to be given access to the house.
Hyde, when we finally see him, is a genuine let-down. This has got to be the least differentiated Jekyll/Hyde pairing in cinema history. Jekyll has a short, light mustache and beard; Hyde has shoulder- length dark hair. No obvious attempt was made to make them sound at all different. In a dim light one could easily confuse one for the other, which is unfortunate because dim light is something this film has in great abundance. Perhaps one other difference is discernible: Jekyll is the one that seems half asleep, perhaps exhausted from the labors of his research. Hyde seems at least mostly awake. The weakness of the performance is particularly puzzling in that Malkovich under Frears direction previously gave us such a compelling Valmont in DANGEROUS LIAISONS (also written by Hampton).
Julia Roberts does not look Victorian somehow and at least at first looks highly out of place in a maid's uniform. It takes a while to see her in this role and not think of previous roles she has played rather than as the Victorian chambermaid. Two fine actors under-used here are Glenn Close, almost unrecognizable as mistress of a bordello. (I believe the bordello is totally the invention of Valerie Martin's novel, incidentally.) Only slightly better used is Michael Gambon as Mary's nightmarish father. Gambon is a fine actor, best known perhaps for the British TV mini-series "The Singing Detective."
A peculiarity of this film is that to understand what is going on, one should already know the Stevenson story, yet if one knows the story, the new film is almost totally redundant. The film builds to its surprise revelation fully realizing that the vast majority of viewers entered the theater already knowing what is to be revealed. By telling the story from the housemaid's point of view, the most dramatic scene of the story has to happen off-stage. This robs the film of most of the story's dramatic impact. The pay-off scene is postponed until much later in the story. When we do see it, the good news is that it is done in a totally original manner, like no way it has been done before in any screen adaptation. The bad news is that nobody in their right mind would have wanted to do it this way. The way it is done adds very greatly to the implausibility of the story. It may well be the worst touch in the film.
George Fenton wrote a score as downbeat as the sunless visuals with occasional touches on the strings very reminiscent of Bernard Herrmann. Curiously, this film played in the same theater opposite MUPPET TREASURE ISLAND. Stevenson is not having a very good year. I may not be either. I give this a -1 on the -4 to +4 scale.
Mark R. Leeper
mark.leeper@att.com
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