I first saw Jessie Buckley in War and Peace as Princess Maria, whom she portrayed with depth and sincerity. And she has done well in other things I have seen her in, I have been really impressed. Such a shame she chose this vile film; she is probably being poorly advised. From Mark Judge at Chronicles:
Take the rage of modern feminism, the scourge of pornography, and add classic Hollywood movie musical and horror elements, overlap with an insane storyline, sew them all together, give the resulting monster a jolt of pointless modern violence, and you’ve got the new movie The Bride! It is, quite possibly, the worst film I’ve ever seen.
Here’s the plot—and no, this is not a joke. The Bride! is set in 1930s Chicago. Frankenstein’s monster (Christian Bale), or “Frank,” is living in the Windy City. Suffering from loneliness, he visits Dr. Euphronious (Annette Bening), a surgeon who specializes in reanimating the dead. Frank is matched with a recently murdered woman named Ida (Jessie Buckley). Ida, it turns out, was murdered shortly after she was possessed by the spirit of Mary Shelly, the original author of the novel Frankenstein. The resuscitated couple go on a Bonnie and Clyde-style road trip, committing crimes that attract the attention of Detective Jake Wiles (Peter Sarsgaard) and his assistant, Myrna Mallow (Penelope Cruz). The couple gets caught, shot down—and then reanimated … again. The Bride! is the kind of film where you sit in the theater, incredulous both about what you are watching and the fact that you are bothering to watch it.
The film is directed by Maggie Gyllenhaal, who, through this film, may be signaling that she needs professional help. The point of the movie, as far as I can tell, is that patriarchal society abuses women, kills them, and drives them mad. The only way to cope is to become a kind of punk rock mercenary (Buckley’s makeup and electroshock blonde hair is pure 1980s LA). The only acceptable male companion is an obedient monster who, like you, is an outsider—or “a non-compliant,” as Dr. Euphonious puts it. Gyllenhaal is a Hollywood A-Lister, so she was able to attract the best actors for her movie. Jessie Buckley switches between Ida, who has a Yonkers accent, to Mary Shelley, who was British, to the Bride, who falls somewhere in between. Buckley gives the performance her all. It’s just sad that her dynamic energy wasn’t put to use for something that makes sense. Ditto for Christian Bale.
There is something deeply disturbing at the heart of The Bride!, but it has nothing to do with the so-called patriarchy. It is more about the corrosive effects of our porn culture.
Every male character in the film has, in some way, abused a woman. The men in the 1930s nightclub at the beginning of the film are not the mannerly companions one might expect from that era, but leering, aggressive abusers with dirty minds and dirty mouths. The dialogue is pure 2026—I don’t think anyone during the Great Depression, for example, regularly used phrases like, “What the actual [expletive]!” Frank is a huge fan of the movie star Ronnie Reed (Jake Gyllenhaal), but even Reed turns out to be a jerk. When Reed dismisses an emotional Frank with a quip about the monster “not being my type,” Frank implodes, crashing a chandelier and helping the Bride escape after she shoots a cop. Did I mention that this might be the worst film I have ever seen?
The depressing takeaway from The Bride! is a theme that conservatives have been warning against for decades. Namely, that we now have multiple generations of young people who are so emotionally fragile that the smallest criticism becomes a mental health crisis and turns them into raging monsters. Take Ronnie Reed’s innocuous line about Frank not being his type. Reed is not even rejecting Frank outright, just offering an innocent quip. Yet it is somehow portrayed as an excuse for monstrous behavior.
If America’s pornography culture really has corroded sexual relationships and men to the degree portrayed in this film—where they cannot be with women in any social situation, or any situation at all, without acting like Patrick Bateman in American Psycho (Christian Bale’s true monster role)—then we do, indeed, have a crisis. But it’s worth noting that that crisis, like American Psycho itself, is about the gay culture’s hatred of women, and something that Hollywood will probably never confront honestly. If you want to see real toxic misogyny, gay Hollywood is where you’ll find it. (Read more.)
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