Mary Reilly
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Movie Reviews of Mary Reilly
Movie Review: Mystery, Suspense...
Summary: 5 Stars
Mary Reiley, masterfully played by Julia Roberts and Dr. Jekyll / Mr. Hyde brilliantly performed by John Malkovich is a suspenseful recreation of the split personality of a man who has an inner evil twin who takes the lives of others as he experiences rage and the desire to control.
If you know the background of the original work by Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson, you know that it is about split personalities, surfacing the fact that within each of us there is the possibility of good and evil and that every human being, if all virtue is removed [kindness, compassion, love, hope, charity, faith] is capable of committing atrocities and go back to animal instincts.
The duality we find in ourselves, if not dealt with in an effort to understand our faults, may create personalities that project evil onto others, surfacing anger, rage, depression and lack of self esteem. Humans that do not deal with their inner demons end displaying an outward respectability that is nothing but social hypocrisy that masks a tendency for inner sins, whether these be lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy or pride.
The movie is set in London and the plot for the most part, takes place in the mansion, with an intuitive and inquisitive Mary Reiley providing her interpretation of the conflict experienced by Dr. Jekyll. Mary Reiley suffered greatly as a child in the hands of an abusive father and as such, she understands the evil within others and how harmful it was to her, therefore, how harmful it is to those that Mr. Hyde encounters during the night.
The plot scenes are set in dark places, Mary Reiley is asked to visit houses of ill repute, where Glenn Close plays the part of the "madam" who will permit Dr. Jekyll to engage in all sorts of evil acts as long as he pays a good price.
We get the feeling that Mary Reiley ends loving her kind employer, the first man to ever protect and confide in her, and that through this love and acceptance of his good and evil, she inspires the evil side to put an end to all suffering. If you like mystery, suspense, horror and dark romance, this is a movie for you! While not our favorite type movie, we were thrilled by the performances. Don't miss it!
Movie Review: FORGET ERIN, MARY DESERVED OSCAR!!!
Summary: 5 Stars
I recently purchased this movie on DVD. It is a remarkable film. ALL the actors are fantastic. The Julia Roberts character is so interesting; timid but not really, loyal and loving in spite of her horrific upbringing. She was "proper" but certainly was following her interest in Jekyll/Hyde to where ever it was going to take her. It is always interesting to me when a movie is sexy without any sex!!! I absolutely swooned--and I mean SWOONED a couple of times--the relationship between Mary, Jekyll, and Hyde was steamy to me--the onscreen chemistry between Roberts and Malkovich topped it off. Sorry, I was wishing for a right-nasty shag scene or two.
I think some of the dialogue is particularly beautiful-
As far as accents: I am a stickler on this point. Married to a Brit for longer than I like to remember, I have become well-aquainted with nuances, regions, class, geographic influences, the ebb and flow of language in and out of England. And, I have always had a real interest in dialects, words, and history. I feel it is important not to jump to conclusions about what we know today and what was then. (I highly recommend THE STORY OF ENGLISH (PBS for anyone interested in this area)
I only get upset about poor accents/dialects in a film if it seems to me the actor is just lazy or uneducated about what they are doing.
I do not ever remember seeing Malkovich in any film in which he assumes a foreign dialect or accent, BUT, for some reason it always works for me. He does something with the way he speaks that seems to transcend dialect, accent, time, place--it just always seems right no matter what the piece he is working on.
I will watch this movie many, many times--just another of those great "little" movies you hear little or nothing of that sticks with you--verbally, visually beautiful! I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.
Movie Review: Nightmares of Fog and Murder
Summary: 5 Stars
The movie rolls in and out with fog for a reason. You may argue that you didn't like Julia Roberts so-so Irish accent or that the movie was too slow but if you can't see the method behind the madness of this film let me enlighten you. The whole movie drifts as a nightmare of fog. The slow part is due to this floating horrible sense of dread that drifts you through these mysterious places that would tend to seem normal but aren't for some unexplainable reason. It's clear that the bounds of reality and dream seem to mingle throughout this movie, and in most part is very disturbing because of this almost expressionist like effect. But this effect works together with the music to achieve this feeling of lurking fear. In one scene that really scared me, a normal act by the workers of an eel being skinned later turns into a horrible dream by Mary of the dead thing rising and staring at her. The film goes even further than the normal Jekyll and Hyde duality theme, showing that there is duality in almost everything. The day and the night, consciousness and dream, human and beast, love and lust, and for the most part starts to blend the ideas into the normal course of a servant's everyday life. Although Jekyll and Hyde are a good and evil influence on the film they are not shown as much because it's dreamscape is through that of Mary. So it shows him not as the tortured victim of a supernatural will battle that he saw himself as but as a mysterious, psychotic, nightmare being that fleshes itself out throughout the film as a real person. In fact the whole movie becomes more real as it progresses. The movie is a very good example of psychological, dream-like terror that is often disturbing and one of the better versions of the Jekyll and Hyde story, only bested by the silent John Barrymore version.Movie Review: Julia deserved an Oscar
Summary: 5 Stars
I have come across many films with Julia Roberts, but I didn't find any of the films (nor Julia's performances) very notable or memorable, not even Erin Brokovich. I never for a moment thought I would see Julia give a quietly powerful, deeply convincing performance in a role we much sympathize with, nor be able to completely change the tone of her American voice to an Irish accent. This was until I saw MARY REILLY. I was most pleasantly surprised when I discovered the Julia Roberts that's been seemingly hidden for so long. There was not a moment in this film that I was convinced that she was Julia Roberts. She was absolutely NO Julia Roberts in this film. She is Dr. Jekyll's dearly devoted maid Mary Reilly, the woman who suffered years of brutal abuse from her father and had the decency to abandon her nightmarish past and find a new and better life for herself.I have to note that John Malkovich did a good job as Dr. Jekyll, but his big problem was that he lacked the ability to speak with a proper English accent, which leaves you far from convinced that he's an Englishman. In that case, he is outshone by Julia Roberts, who, as an Irish woman, does her Irish accent superbly.
Now, back to Julia. As I said earlier, she most definitely deserved an Oscar for this performance. She played Mary with as much grace, charisma and frailty as could be possible. This is without a doubt the performance of her entire career. If you Oscar people can't even nominate an actress for an Oscar for an exceptional, Oscar-worthy performance, at least give her the praise she's entitled to.
Movie Review: Of Fog and Forgiveness
Summary: 5 Stars
This entire movie seems dreamlike to me - with the haunting violin emitting its folk song tune as if it were drifting on the fog that is ever present throughout the film. For me, this beautifully disturbing film is really about Julia Roberts' character working through the pain and abuse her father has caused rather than a true love story, or story about Jekyll/Hyde. Mary Reilly is attracted to both Jekyll and Hyde and continues to do the strange and dangerous errands he asks her to rather than refusing because she is so uncomfortable doing them. The result is exposing a surprising and complicated duality to Mary Reilly as well the obvious one we all know about for Jekyll/Hyde. An additional result is also a positive one - at the end she has experienced true love (and to some extent sympathy, which is perhaps connected to the forgiveness she has for both her father and Jekyll/Hyde) for someone so unworthy of it, and also allowed herself to receive it (love), which is not something she has experienced as an adult woman yet (due to the horrible abuse she suffered at the hands of her father), even though the ending is only happy in that she is able to leave. I love this strong yet completely vulnerable and self-conscious character Roberts has portrayed, and truly feel that this role is one of the most interesting and insightful of any character Roberts has played before. And of course, Malkovich, Glenn Close, George Cole, and Michael Gambon are phenomenal. I also enjoyed seeing Michael Sheen in this role so early in his movie career.