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Hyde and Seek

Photo by Clive Coote

Maid Mary: Julia Roberts in 'Mary Reilly"

'Mary Reilly' turns a new eye on a classic tale

By Allen Barra

Mary Reilly is that rarest of spinoffs: one that adds a new dimension to the original story. In this case, the original is one of the most famous of English short novels, Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Based on a 1990 novel by Valerie Martin, Mary Reilly retells the familiar story from the perspective of a young Irish housemaid (Julia Roberts) who comes to work for the good doctor (John Malkovich) whose medical experiments have taken a troubling turn.

Vladimir Nabokov, whose famous essay on Stevenson helped to resurrect Dr. Jekyll from the juvenile, horror and mystery ghettos it had been assigned to by most critics, noted that contrary to popular opinion, Dr. Jekyll does not really transform himself into the vicious Mr. Hyde "but projects a concentrate of pure evil that becomes Hyde. ... There are really three personalities, Jekyll, Hyde, and a third, the Jekyll residue when Hyde takes over." Nabokov zeros in on a significant point: "Hyde still wants to change back to Jekyll."

I mention Nabokov because the filmmakers will almost certainly be knocked for "softening" Hyde, even though, in fact, they've expanded on his evil. Stevenson's Hyde commits only one murder, but in Mary Reilly, there is also the horrifying slaying of a prostitute. Why wasn't the murder mentioned before, Frears wants us to ask? Because the victim was a prostitute, Mary Reilly answers; such women could be swept under the rug. It's Frears' way of injecting two of his favorite themes--class and sexual politics--into a classic.

And it works. Stevenson wrote his story before the advent of Freudian analysis, but the tale is so resilient that it supports Freudian, Marxist and feminist interpretations. Jekyll is something of a cold, Victorian fish of undetermined sexual bent--"Never a woman stepped in the front door," as a maid in Mary Reilly slyly puts it--and Malkovich is the perfect actor to convey a repressed man with bad sexual wiring. Both his Jekyll and Hyde are taken with the loyal, sweet-voiced Mary, but social rank and her religion forbid a real union.

Frears' tone might be called High Victorian Gothic. Cinematographer Philippe Rousselot makes the action look as though it were a projection of Mary's psyche, full of brown-toned, gas-lighted interiors and mist-shrouded exteriors into which Mary fades at the end like a character in a German expressionist film, while George Fenton's plaintive score seems like a soundtrack for Mary's subconscious--haunted and yearning. Admittedly, Roberts is not much of an actress (Mary Reilly gives her a chance to display another dimension, but that still makes only two); even so, she behaves well in a difficult role, projecting a serenity that convincingly attracts Malkovich's soul in torment. Her goodness offers a reason for the ultimate salvation that Stevenson hints at--she draws good out of Hyde.

There have been several screen adaptations of Stevenson's story, most notably in 1920 (with John Barrymore), 1932 (Fredric March) and 1941 (Spencer Tracy). All became hits largely by simplifying Stevenson's creation into a basic clash between good and evil. Director Stephen Frears and screenwriter Christopher Hampton have gone the opposite route, creating a complex, multilayered story in which good and evil are no longer so easily bifurcated.

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Mary Reilly (R: 117 min.), directed by Stephen Frears, written by Christopher Hampton, based on the novel by Valerie Martin, photographed by Philippe Rousselot and starring Julia Roberts and John Malkovich.


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