It’s hard to write about Mary Shelley and not fangirl a little. After all, her definitive work Frankenstein is a masterpiece, and it’s a text no English Literature major can escape, nor should they want to. We all know the story of how it came about: it was the summer of 1816, and the group of Lord Byron, Percy Shelley, together with Mary and her sister Claire found themselves living together in the Villa Diodati.
The weather, unusually wet despite it being summer, confined them indoors, and in seeking entertainment, they stumbled upon some volumes of ghost stories. It was then that Lord Byron suggested that each of them write a ghost story, and despite him and Percy Shelley being more established writers than Mary, it was the novice that came up with a story that would stand the test of time.
That story was the rudimentary beginnings of Frankenstein, which Mary referred to as her “hideous progeny”, and it is with this sentiment in mind that Nora Unkel builds A Nightmare Wakes. We follow Mary (Alix Wilton Regan) on her path of creation, one rife with madness and fevered dreams, the world in her mind leaking into the present, and Unkel competently weaves the narrative of Frankenstein with Mary’s own tragic present. It is so complexly layered, for Mary’s mind creates in the same breath her body destroys. Unkel highlights the miscarriage Mary went through, as well as the death of her infant son soon after he was born.
There isn’t much of a narrative here, but the thing is, we don’t really need a plot to move things along, for the mood and atmosphere built into the film, as well as Regan’s haunting portrayal of Mary and her complicated relationship with Percy (Giullian Yao Gioiello), is enough to enthrall the viewer. As we sink into the swirling waters of ink and blood, Mary sinks further into her mind, where she sees herself transfigured into Frankenstein’s monster. The parallels between the two are obvious: both figures of transgression (Mary for daring to live in sin with a married man) and outcasts, seeking love from the one closest to them, yet spurned each time.
Her relationship with Percy is tumultuous, shadowed by his infidelities and supposed affair with her sister (there isn’t enough proof to say with certainty, but the murmurings have weight), and she struggles with the failure of her body as a vessel – a woman who cannot create is viewed as a perverse thing. While Unkel’s tale is a reimagining of Mary’s life, and is fictional for the most part, the way events blend so seamlessly with the real details of her life is a testament to the power of Unkel’s narrative. There is clearly much love for Mary here, for the film seeks to build her up despite the tragic descents she experienced.
Compared to the 2017’s biopic of Shelley’s life, A Nightmare Wakes does Mary justice, for it steeps her in the space of a gothic tale and isn’t a sanitized yarn of romance. In the vein of Josephine Decker’s Shirley, we traverse the path of delirium to bear witness to a woman’s creation, and at the end we find ourselves facing the creature she conjured, realising that it wasn’t a monster after all.
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