I just recently rewatched Shakespeare in Love and it was a s good, if not better than I
remember it. John Madden’s film of the fictional and comic fantasy of how the
greatest romantic tragedy in literary history came to be was my favorite film
of 1998. I saw it Christmas Day, part of a moviegoing tradition I diligently
maintained from 1997 through 2005, and then again a few weeks after. I bought
the DVD in 1999 and have watched it a few times over the years and now I have
the Blu-Ray (yes, I’m a dinosaur) so I can enjoy it in HD whenever I please. I
was one of few people to accurately predict its victory in the Best Picture
Oscar contest. In the Oscar pool I used to manage, only three people out of
about thirty made that pick over Saving
Private Ryan.
To this day, plenty of people lament that as one of
Oscar’s greatest tragedies along with Crash
winning over Brokeback
Mountain. I’m not in that camp. Saving
Private Ryan is perhaps the better film on a technical level and it is a
harrowing treatment of an important historical event (the D-Day invasion, not
the fictional search behind enemy lines for a single U.S. soldier as a PR
stunt). People say it was just Harvey Weinstein’s muscle and money that scored
the victory for Shakespeare in Love.
That’s likely accurate to some extent, but only as far as he got the film in
front of Academy members’ eyes. The story had to do the work of drawing out
their emotions. And there was undeniably something in the air with Shakespeare in Love. People were
responding deeply. They loved it. It was intelligent, witty, romantic, at times
outrageously funny, and smartly wove a thread of fantastic ingenuity through
the history of Elizabethan England and Shakespeare’s oeuvre. And I have to say,
in spite of anticipating a disappointingly negative reaction this time around,
centered on schmaltz and emotional manipulation, I was once again swept up in
the film’s story. Everything I thought about the film seventeen years ago
remains true today, only more enhanced with a capacity for greater appreciation
for quality writing and narrative.
The screenplay by Marc Norman and tom Stoppard, two well-studied
scholars of Shakespeare judging by their writing, pulls out all the stops when
it comes to inside jokes related to the Bard’s life and works. But the
brilliance is not in the presence of jokes for those ‘in the know,’ but in the
fact that you need not have an extensive knowledge of Shakespeare’s plays to
enjoy the film. One is not dependent on the other, but is merely an
enhancement. So in the opening scene of Will practicing his signature, eh
tosses a ball of paper that lands next to a skull. If that means anything to
you, then you may chuckle. If not, then the moment will sail by and you’ll be
none the poorer for it. I’ll be the first to admit that I’m certain there are
jokes that continue to elude me. When I first saw the movie, I had no idea there
was an actual playwright after Shakespeare named John Webster, whose plays were
known for blood and violence. Sure, it’s a little hammy that a boy character
continues to remark about how much he liked Titus
Andronicus and all the fighting in the plays. Of course he’s the young
Webster.
Stoppard and Norman (though the screenplay is credited to
both, I believe it’s been widely accepted that the premise and first draft were
Norman’s while the finished product bears Stoppard’s fingerprints) carefully
and cleverly weave the narrative of Romeo
and Juliet into their own story of the daughter of an aristocrat falling in
love with Shakespeare. Their actions often parallel or presage what happens in
the play that Will is writing (which starts out as Romeo and Ethel, the Pirate’s Daughter), the idea being that Will’s
inspiration is drawn from his own love life and moments within it. The balcony
scene comes together in rehearsal in a beautiful montage cut together with Will
and Viola making love while also reciting lines from the play. On paper and in
description this must sound terrible. It could so easily have become the stuff
of ridicule, absurdity, ham-handedness, and the appearance of erudition. But
Madden’s direction strikes a perfect balance that makes everything feel so
natural, so beautiful, and with the feeling of eternal romance.
There are so many joys to be had while admiring the way
this film imagines Shakespeare’s transition from actor for hire and sometime
writer to renowned and unforgettable William Shakespeare. We are treated to an
endless stream of “what if” moments that purport to explain from whence he
culled his ideas. He counts out the meter of phrases he hears on the street.
His first conversation with his muse Viola is below her balcony while her nurse
calls her to bed. One of the most challenging things to do in movies is to
depict genius at work. Whether it’s a scientist toiling away toward the brink
of discovery or a songwriter hitting upon a big idea for a new melody or lyric,
intellectual rigor is not very cinematic. Perhaps most difficult of all is to
show a writer at work. Somehow Madden achieves it with a big assist from editor
David Gamble.
Will is played impeccably by Joseph Fiennes (in
retrospect it continues to be an egregious crime that his name was left off the
final Oscar ballot). He is witty, lithe, smart, and as capable of swirling his
tongue around Shakespeare’s dialogue as he is of taking a hysterical pratfall. The
supporting cast is a who’s who of British stage and screen royalty, many of
whom were just starting to be known and recognized in the States. Geoffrey Rush
of course had already won an Oscar two years prior to playing Philip Henslowe,
the owner of the Rose where Shakespeare’s latest is to be presented. Tom
Wilkinson is “the money” and becomes enamored with the theater. That’s Imelda
Staunton as Viola’s nurse. Colin Firth is there as the sniveling fiancé to
Viola, a man who will whisk her away to his Virginia colony to bear children to
farm his tobacco. Of course the indomitable Judi Dench made a big impression as
Queen Elizabeth and won the Oscar for her eight minutes of screen time. Rupert
Everett turns up uncredited as Shakespeare’s rival and better, Christopher
Marlowe, who feeds him some basic plot points that help improve Romeo and Juliet. And Ben Affleck,
superstar of the late 90s, fills in as the pompous Ned Alleyn, an actor who
thinks a little too much of himself. Affleck makes a meal of the role and it’s
perfect because he’s not much of an actor, but he can play cocky and give the
audience a few good winks and pull it off convincingly.
There’s truly nothing in this movie I don’t fully admire.
It’s even worth a viewing just for Sandy Powell’s gorgeous costumes which are
not just stuffy period outfits, but they teem with life and bring out character
elements that otherwise wouldn’t have been there. I could go on about Stephen
Warbeck’s beautiful, amazing, and memorable score that strikes chords of joy,
danger, melancholy, wistfulness, and heartbreak. I stand by Shakespeare in Love as I stood by it
seventeen years ago. It was wholly deserving of its awards accolades and is in
fact not just a throwaway romantic fantasy. It is a durable work of great wit
and artistry, worthy of telling the fake story of the greatest playwright in
the history of the English language.
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