“The Bride!,” Maggie Gyllenhaal’s iconoclastic take on the story of The Bride of Frankenstein and Frankenstein, is opening in cinemas soon!
Here, the star-studded cast, led by Academy Award nominee and recent Golden Globe and BAFTA winner Jessie Buckley (for “Hamnet”) and Academy Award winner Christian Bale, talk about the film and working with Gyllenhaal as a director.
On what the story of “The Bride!” means for her, Buckley, who plays the titular character, says, “I think the title THE BRIDE! isn’t about being individual or being on your own. The Bride means that you are absolutely in relationship to something or someone. And in this case, The Bride is in a deep, meaningful, powerful, passionate relationship with Frank, and she wants that to be absolute. And she also wants to be in relationship with the world. She doesn’t want to be locked in a room, in an attic. She wants love, and she wants her mind to be alive. She doesn’t want to have to be deciphered, or have parts of her accepted and other parts of her not accepted. And I think this film is about autonomy of the self and incubating your monster, your shadows so you can be in undeniable full bodied relationship with each other. How much of me can you actually love? Not just the idea of me.”
Upon reading the script, Bale, who plays Frankenstein, thought to himself that “The Bride!” was a movie that he would personally love to go see – and that’s what made him want to be a part of it. “I always love the challenge of failing miserably,” says Bale. “There have been so many renditions of Frankenstein’s monster done – and in my mind they all pale in comparison to Boris Karloff [who gained iconic status for playing Frankenstein in “Frankenstein” (1931) and its sequels] – so I wanted to give a nod to him, but also incorporate Mary Shelley’s original take. It can be quite impulsive, the choices we make depending on the mood you’re in, but this one really stuck with me as something unique and original, with a punk rock sensibility… and more than anything, I just wanted to see this movie.”
Peter Sarsgaard, who plays the detective hot on the heels of the outlaw couple, has nothing but praise for Maggie Gyllenhaal as a director. For him, what stands out about the way Gyllenhaal directs is that “She has such unlimited energy. And the fact that she has all these cameras going, all these monitors, and she’s able to give notes. She’s doing cross-coverage. You have to look at two monitors at the same time and note two actors at the same time. And it’s so fluid and easy for Maggie, working with actors. I mean, this is a huge logistical thing. This is like putting on a party that is the biggest party you could possibly arrange.”
Like with Bale, it was the story that attracted Annette Bening and Jake Gyllenhaal to the project. “What stood out for me is the original voice of the writing,” says Bening, who plays Dr. Euphronious. “Maggie’s take on the story and how she’s able to really incorporate her contemporary concerns, her contemporary thoughts, her life experience, what she wants to say about what’s happening now in the world, but using this story to really give flight to this incredible, imaginative, thoughtful, passionate voice inside of her. So, the script is, for me, original. Completely original.” Gyllenhaal, who plays a matinee idol in the film, says of his sister Maggie’s story, “I was blown away by the world she created on the page.”
Penélope Cruz, who plays Myrna Malloy, assistant to Detective Wiles, talks about her character’s internal conflict after she meets The Bride. “There is something that happens to Myrna when she encounters The Bride – her energy, her mission and her words, and how Myrna can identify with the stories that the Bride shares in that scene, about her and about other women. Myrna has not been in those situations herself, but she has found in her life, in her work, many cases related to women being treated like that,” shares Cruz. “I feel like she has an immediate connection, and she starts having a conflict of, ‘I’m meant to save the world from The Bride and Frank – what if it’s the other way around? What if they are actually more sane than most of us, or most of the majority of people?’ And I feel like that conflict is inside her through the entire movie, and it only grows. The more she finds out about The Bride and about Frank and their love story, the more it’s like two fish swimming in opposite directions. She’s supposed to get rid of them, but actually what they represent makes a lot more sense than a lot of the things that she sees every day, and that are presented to her as good or ethical or right, and it doesn’t make sense to her.
Experience a bold, iconoclastic take on one of the world’s most compelling stories when “The Bride!” opens only in cinemas March 4. #TheBrideMovie
