Mary Reilly movie review & film summary (1996)

"Mary Reilly" is in some ways more faithful to the spirit of Robert Lewis Stevenson's original story than any of the earlier films based on it, because it's true to the underlying horror. This film is not about makeup or special effects, or Hyde turning into the Wolf Man. It's about a powerless young woman who feels sympathy for one side of a man's nature, and horror of the other.

The movie stars Julia Roberts as Mary, an Irish servant in the dark, fogbound Edinburgh of more than a century ago. John Malkovich is both Dr. Henry Jekyll, a respected local physician, and Mr. Edward Hyde, the creature he becomes after taking an experimental potion.

What does Jekyll hope the potion will provide? Youth? Health? Potency? In a sense, he hopes it will liberate him from Hyde - from the Hyde we all have lurking within us. In another, more frightening sense, he hopes Hyde will liberate him, to be more of an animal, and less of what was then called a gentleman.

Stephen Frears, the director, plays most of the action on a few vast and yet claustrophobic sets. We see Jekyll's library, filled with books to intimidate the uneducated housemaid. His operating theater, a Victorian monstrosity with tiers of seats for observers, looking down into the circles of hell. His laboratory, behind the house, usually locked, reached by a strange walkway suspended from chains. His bedroom, which one day is covered with blood, even on the ceiling. The servants' quarters downstairs, where the strict butler (George Cole) is jealous of the attention the master is giving young Mary.

Why is Jekyll drawn to her? Because of her scars. He asks her about them, and finally she reveals that she was beaten as a child, and locked in a closet with rats. And yet she refuses to say she hates her father for his treatment of her. This powerfully attracts Jekyll, who already feels that the Hyde side of his nature is beyond human acceptance. If Mary cannot hate her father, perhaps she cannot hate Jekyll and his secret; that would make her the only human soul with sympathy for the suffering doctor.

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