Mary-Sue, More Like
Our final review in the Jekyll and Hyde retrospective: Mary Reilly.
I figured I’d close out this retrospective with Mary Reilly because it was a slightly different take on the Jekyll and Hyde story, and thus might offer up some variety. The good news was, it was indeed different, and often in interesting ways. The bad news is, there are two major aspects that bring it down.
As the title suggests, the main character of the story is Mary Reilly (Julia Roberts), an Irish woman working as a maid for Dr. Henry Jekyll (John Malkovich). Despite all the work she has to do and the nasty attitude of head butler Poole (George Cole), she likes her position-not only is it better than what she left behind, but she’s forming a bond of sorts with Jekyll. Then Jekyll announces that an associate of his named Hyde will be a regular visitor to the house, leading to curiosity among the staff that turns to dislike once they actually meet the “assistant”. Mary goes along with it for Jekyll’s sake, even though she doesn’t much like Hyde either, particularly since Hyde seems to be interested in her. Eventually, of course, she finds out the truth, and things get complicated, both for her and for the two men. Though I guess saying one man would be more appropriate…
The movie does two things that I think work, though I’m not sure if one of them was intentional. The possibly unintentional one is that it mirrors the more mystery aspects of the original book. Indeed, I think Mary Reilly is the most book-accurate of all the adaptations I’ve watched, which is odd given the massive changes I’ll be describing shortly. But it’s true; the layout of Jekyll’s house with the lab separated by a courtyard, Jekyll telling his servants to get used to Hyde’s presence, Hyde injuring a girl and having to pay reparations, Jekyll being older while Hyde is younger, Hyde defacing Jekyll’s books…a lot of the big and small details are in there. It even accurately uses that one plot point I really like. While the story doesn’t include the character of Utterson, and thus strips out a huge aspect of the book, there’s still enough material there for book fans to appreciate.
However, while I think all of that was intentional, the fact that they kept it a “secret” that Jekyll and Hyde are the same person for a long stretch of the movie probably wasn’t an homage to the book. I say this because it clashes with the other thing that the movie does well-telling a well-known story from a sideways point of view. By this point, pretty much everyone knows at least the broad strokes of the Jekyll and Hyde story, so the minute you hear one or both of those names you know exactly the way this is going to go, and thus the mystery is spoiled. Perhaps it would still be somewhat of a surprise if you’ve somehow never heard of the story, but the movie quickly clues you in, both by a significant shot of Jekyll’s lab accompanied by a scream and then by one of the movie’s major weaknesses, which I’ll get to in a minute. However, if you do know the story, then it can be interesting and enjoyable to see the familiar beats in flashes, glimpsed by characters who aren’t aware of the same things we are. It makes the material feel fresh, and can also add to the tension as we wonder if these characters are going to run afoul of Hyde. If just a few things had been changed, I probably would have classified this as a genuinely good movie. As it is, however, I have to describe the movie as “I kind of like it, but…”
As I said in the introduction, there are two big problems with the movie, which take awhile to become obvious but quickly overshadow the good material. It turns out that both of them are character based, and relate to the two (three?) main characters. Let’s start with Mary. Roberts gives a decent performance and the character isn’t bad on paper, but the way things are written in this script led to me shaking my head. Maybe this is a problem unique to me and those who spend a lot of time in fandom, but I had trouble with her character because she became more and more of a Mary-Sue as the movie went on. She really does hit a checklist of a lot of the big tells of a Mary-Sue. There’s the tragic backstory, complete with at least one abusive parent; a character gets warped just so that they can be mean to Mary and make her life difficult (Poole, who is portrayed in the original story as a loyal butler absolutely devoted to and worried about Jekyll, and is here portrayed as almost dictatorial); both the hero and the villain have feelings for her; relatedly, she’s so alluring that everyone notices, despite her simple clothes; and she twists the plot so that she’s in the center of the action, getting to be the hero in lieu of someone else. That’s the real reason Utterson doesn’t exist in this movie, because Mary took his place. I might have been more tolerant of this, if the later beats of the story didn’t completely and utterly ruin Hyde’s character for the sake of showing how special Mary is. Everything else was a minor annoyance, but that last bit (which only really shows up in the last act, thus making it much more memorable and likely to ruin what came before) made it impossible for me to ever consider it a good adaptation, or a truly good movie.
There’s also a pointless subplot in the movie that I want to elaborate on, just because so much time is spent on it that I must assume there was some intent to it that was executed badly. At the start of the movie, Mary tells Jekyll about her past. Specifically, she talks about how her drunk, abusive father once locked her in a closet with a rat, who attacked her and left her with permanent scars. In the course of this discussion, she talks about her father’s peculiar way of walking. Fast forward a bit to when Hyde has entered the scene but not officially made an appearance yet, and not only does he kill a rat and leave it in a place where Mary was almost certain to see it, but Hyde’s walk is described the exact same way her father’s was. I assumed from all this that Jekyll was using Hyde to get revenge on Mary’s father for Mary’s sake, that this would all culminate in him killing the man and Mary either being grateful or horrified by this. Instead, after several scenes where her father is mentioned or otherwise alluded to, she finally meets him again after a funeral (he’s played by Michael Gambon), where he tries to make amends, and she rebuffs him. At this point, he disappears from the narrative and nothing more ever comes of it. Why were we building the man up so much if all he really added to the story was more of a reason for Mary and Jekyll to connect? Was he meant to be a counterpoint to Hyde? Or was he meant to be a motivation of sorts so Mary could find herself drawn to Jekyll and perhaps even Hyde (I hate to use the mocking term “daddy issues”, but that’s about the most succinct way of summing up this particular explanation)? All I know is that I expected a much bigger payoff than we actually got.
With all that out of the way, it’s time to turn to Jekyll and Hyde. I’m afraid I can’t fully judge Malkovich’s performance, because both the writing of the character and the choices made to portray the two characters are just misguided in every single way. Like I said, the script ruins Hyde’s character in the last act, and while Jekyll fares slightly better (if you can get past the fact that he seems attracted to his maid, which might have been normal for the period but still has some uncomfortable implications), they imply that his reason for wanting to become Hyde is related to either a physical or a mental illness, which isn’t the worst motivation in the world but isn’t elaborated on in a way that really makes it work. But what really annoyed me about it was the apparent lack of caring in regards to Malkovich’s look and voice. While all of the other characters are British (even Roberts has to put on an Irish accent), Malkovich is just walking around talking with his normal, American voice. Sometimes if you strain your ears, he may be trying for a Scottish or Irish accent, but I suspect he wasn’t even trying to put an accent on at all. Furthermore, most actors try to at least make some distinctions between the Jekyll and the Hyde voices, but Malkovich isn’t doing that either. Maybe that could have worked if the two looked different, but even though they did make Hyde younger than Jekyll, all that means is that Hyde has longer, darker hair and no facial hair. Anybody with half a brain could see that the two men are connected; indeed, one of the servants (a young Michael Sheen) even suggests that Hyde is Jekyll’s illegitimate son. And yet later in the story, Mary says that no one would have suspected the truth. While that’s true in the sense that no one would believe that a man could split himself into two people via chemicals, I feel like people would have figured things out a lot faster in this version of the story. All the surface level aspects of Jekyll and Hyde frayed my suspension of disbelief; the last act snapped it entirely.
I’ll close out the main body of this review with a few miscellaneous observations. If there’s one thing I’ll give the movie credit for, it’s that it does feel like an accurate portrayal of what being a live-in servant would have been like. They have to wake up incredibly early, do all sorts of work that ranges from practical to frivolous (at one point Mary appears to be ironing shoelaces), have decent but spartan living conditions, and don’t get paid very much, though I guess that would be compensated for somewhat by the room and board. So that was interesting to see, even if it wasn’t entirely pleasant. Another noteworthy thing is the one transformation scene we see. While I don’t hate the idea they went with, it also felt a little too brutal, and mostly seemed to be in the movie just to show off some special effects (plus, surely we’d have heard a lot more screaming during each transformation, instead of just twice). I also don’t know what to make of Jekyll’s lab, or rather an outdoor portion of it. I could swear I’ve seen a similar setup in other movies set in Victorian Britain, and yet it seems really impractical, implausible, and not something Jekyll would need or want. And finally, the ending is kind of abrupt and anticlimactic. In fact, I’m not entirely sure what tone it’s supposed to have, given an earlier scene which read as incredibly ambiguous to me. Based on the Wikipedia entry, I don’t think things happened the way I initially read them, but given the circumstances, I’d have liked a definitive answer. Though my interpretation would fit in perfectly with all the other Mary-Sue tropes Mary’s got…
I’m torn about recommending this one. A lot of the surrounding material is executed well enough that I’m not actively annoyed by the movie, my multi-paragraph rant above notwithstanding. At the same time, the changes made to the story (or general execution, if you want to watch it as a movie and not an adaptation) are glaring problems that will severely cut into your enjoyment. So I guess I’d say that you should give it a try if you like the story and want to see a different take, but be prepared for it to go off the rails. In a way, I guess it’s appropriate that I’m of two minds about the movie. It puts me in good company with the key character of Stevenson’s story, after all…
I figured I’d close out this retrospective with Mary Reilly because it was a slightly different take on the Jekyll and Hyde story, and thus might offer up some variety. The good news was, it was indeed different, and often in interesting ways. The bad news is, there are two major aspects that bring it down.
As the title suggests, the main character of the story is Mary Reilly (Julia Roberts), an Irish woman working as a maid for Dr. Henry Jekyll (John Malkovich). Despite all the work she has to do and the nasty attitude of head butler Poole (George Cole), she likes her position-not only is it better than what she left behind, but she’s forming a bond of sorts with Jekyll. Then Jekyll announces that an associate of his named Hyde will be a regular visitor to the house, leading to curiosity among the staff that turns to dislike once they actually meet the “assistant”. Mary goes along with it for Jekyll’s sake, even though she doesn’t much like Hyde either, particularly since Hyde seems to be interested in her. Eventually, of course, she finds out the truth, and things get complicated, both for her and for the two men. Though I guess saying one man would be more appropriate…
The movie does two things that I think work, though I’m not sure if one of them was intentional. The possibly unintentional one is that it mirrors the more mystery aspects of the original book. Indeed, I think Mary Reilly is the most book-accurate of all the adaptations I’ve watched, which is odd given the massive changes I’ll be describing shortly. But it’s true; the layout of Jekyll’s house with the lab separated by a courtyard, Jekyll telling his servants to get used to Hyde’s presence, Hyde injuring a girl and having to pay reparations, Jekyll being older while Hyde is younger, Hyde defacing Jekyll’s books…a lot of the big and small details are in there. It even accurately uses that one plot point I really like. While the story doesn’t include the character of Utterson, and thus strips out a huge aspect of the book, there’s still enough material there for book fans to appreciate.
However, while I think all of that was intentional, the fact that they kept it a “secret” that Jekyll and Hyde are the same person for a long stretch of the movie probably wasn’t an homage to the book. I say this because it clashes with the other thing that the movie does well-telling a well-known story from a sideways point of view. By this point, pretty much everyone knows at least the broad strokes of the Jekyll and Hyde story, so the minute you hear one or both of those names you know exactly the way this is going to go, and thus the mystery is spoiled. Perhaps it would still be somewhat of a surprise if you’ve somehow never heard of the story, but the movie quickly clues you in, both by a significant shot of Jekyll’s lab accompanied by a scream and then by one of the movie’s major weaknesses, which I’ll get to in a minute. However, if you do know the story, then it can be interesting and enjoyable to see the familiar beats in flashes, glimpsed by characters who aren’t aware of the same things we are. It makes the material feel fresh, and can also add to the tension as we wonder if these characters are going to run afoul of Hyde. If just a few things had been changed, I probably would have classified this as a genuinely good movie. As it is, however, I have to describe the movie as “I kind of like it, but…”
As I said in the introduction, there are two big problems with the movie, which take awhile to become obvious but quickly overshadow the good material. It turns out that both of them are character based, and relate to the two (three?) main characters. Let’s start with Mary. Roberts gives a decent performance and the character isn’t bad on paper, but the way things are written in this script led to me shaking my head. Maybe this is a problem unique to me and those who spend a lot of time in fandom, but I had trouble with her character because she became more and more of a Mary-Sue as the movie went on. She really does hit a checklist of a lot of the big tells of a Mary-Sue. There’s the tragic backstory, complete with at least one abusive parent; a character gets warped just so that they can be mean to Mary and make her life difficult (Poole, who is portrayed in the original story as a loyal butler absolutely devoted to and worried about Jekyll, and is here portrayed as almost dictatorial); both the hero and the villain have feelings for her; relatedly, she’s so alluring that everyone notices, despite her simple clothes; and she twists the plot so that she’s in the center of the action, getting to be the hero in lieu of someone else. That’s the real reason Utterson doesn’t exist in this movie, because Mary took his place. I might have been more tolerant of this, if the later beats of the story didn’t completely and utterly ruin Hyde’s character for the sake of showing how special Mary is. Everything else was a minor annoyance, but that last bit (which only really shows up in the last act, thus making it much more memorable and likely to ruin what came before) made it impossible for me to ever consider it a good adaptation, or a truly good movie.
There’s also a pointless subplot in the movie that I want to elaborate on, just because so much time is spent on it that I must assume there was some intent to it that was executed badly. At the start of the movie, Mary tells Jekyll about her past. Specifically, she talks about how her drunk, abusive father once locked her in a closet with a rat, who attacked her and left her with permanent scars. In the course of this discussion, she talks about her father’s peculiar way of walking. Fast forward a bit to when Hyde has entered the scene but not officially made an appearance yet, and not only does he kill a rat and leave it in a place where Mary was almost certain to see it, but Hyde’s walk is described the exact same way her father’s was. I assumed from all this that Jekyll was using Hyde to get revenge on Mary’s father for Mary’s sake, that this would all culminate in him killing the man and Mary either being grateful or horrified by this. Instead, after several scenes where her father is mentioned or otherwise alluded to, she finally meets him again after a funeral (he’s played by Michael Gambon), where he tries to make amends, and she rebuffs him. At this point, he disappears from the narrative and nothing more ever comes of it. Why were we building the man up so much if all he really added to the story was more of a reason for Mary and Jekyll to connect? Was he meant to be a counterpoint to Hyde? Or was he meant to be a motivation of sorts so Mary could find herself drawn to Jekyll and perhaps even Hyde (I hate to use the mocking term “daddy issues”, but that’s about the most succinct way of summing up this particular explanation)? All I know is that I expected a much bigger payoff than we actually got.
With all that out of the way, it’s time to turn to Jekyll and Hyde. I’m afraid I can’t fully judge Malkovich’s performance, because both the writing of the character and the choices made to portray the two characters are just misguided in every single way. Like I said, the script ruins Hyde’s character in the last act, and while Jekyll fares slightly better (if you can get past the fact that he seems attracted to his maid, which might have been normal for the period but still has some uncomfortable implications), they imply that his reason for wanting to become Hyde is related to either a physical or a mental illness, which isn’t the worst motivation in the world but isn’t elaborated on in a way that really makes it work. But what really annoyed me about it was the apparent lack of caring in regards to Malkovich’s look and voice. While all of the other characters are British (even Roberts has to put on an Irish accent), Malkovich is just walking around talking with his normal, American voice. Sometimes if you strain your ears, he may be trying for a Scottish or Irish accent, but I suspect he wasn’t even trying to put an accent on at all. Furthermore, most actors try to at least make some distinctions between the Jekyll and the Hyde voices, but Malkovich isn’t doing that either. Maybe that could have worked if the two looked different, but even though they did make Hyde younger than Jekyll, all that means is that Hyde has longer, darker hair and no facial hair. Anybody with half a brain could see that the two men are connected; indeed, one of the servants (a young Michael Sheen) even suggests that Hyde is Jekyll’s illegitimate son. And yet later in the story, Mary says that no one would have suspected the truth. While that’s true in the sense that no one would believe that a man could split himself into two people via chemicals, I feel like people would have figured things out a lot faster in this version of the story. All the surface level aspects of Jekyll and Hyde frayed my suspension of disbelief; the last act snapped it entirely.
I’ll close out the main body of this review with a few miscellaneous observations. If there’s one thing I’ll give the movie credit for, it’s that it does feel like an accurate portrayal of what being a live-in servant would have been like. They have to wake up incredibly early, do all sorts of work that ranges from practical to frivolous (at one point Mary appears to be ironing shoelaces), have decent but spartan living conditions, and don’t get paid very much, though I guess that would be compensated for somewhat by the room and board. So that was interesting to see, even if it wasn’t entirely pleasant. Another noteworthy thing is the one transformation scene we see. While I don’t hate the idea they went with, it also felt a little too brutal, and mostly seemed to be in the movie just to show off some special effects (plus, surely we’d have heard a lot more screaming during each transformation, instead of just twice). I also don’t know what to make of Jekyll’s lab, or rather an outdoor portion of it. I could swear I’ve seen a similar setup in other movies set in Victorian Britain, and yet it seems really impractical, implausible, and not something Jekyll would need or want. And finally, the ending is kind of abrupt and anticlimactic. In fact, I’m not entirely sure what tone it’s supposed to have, given an earlier scene which read as incredibly ambiguous to me. Based on the Wikipedia entry, I don’t think things happened the way I initially read them, but given the circumstances, I’d have liked a definitive answer. Though my interpretation would fit in perfectly with all the other Mary-Sue tropes Mary’s got…
I’m torn about recommending this one. A lot of the surrounding material is executed well enough that I’m not actively annoyed by the movie, my multi-paragraph rant above notwithstanding. At the same time, the changes made to the story (or general execution, if you want to watch it as a movie and not an adaptation) are glaring problems that will severely cut into your enjoyment. So I guess I’d say that you should give it a try if you like the story and want to see a different take, but be prepared for it to go off the rails. In a way, I guess it’s appropriate that I’m of two minds about the movie. It puts me in good company with the key character of Stevenson’s story, after all…