To an extent
Shakespeare in Love was a victim of its own success. It opened after a lengthy gestation period to good reviews, and seemed to stay in the cinemas forever, eventually winning undeserved Oscars for Best Picture, Best Music and, most inexplicably of all, Best Actress for Lady Gwyneth of Paltrow. Unmerited Oscars are hardly a new phenomenon, but skim the movies
discussion board on IMDb and I guarantee there will be at least one person asking how this won over Saving Private Ryan and The Truman Show. Actually, in our recent
1998 Oscar retrospective, OWF readers didn't even nominate the film, choosing five other features from 1998 as superior. That Paltrow was an American playing a Brit, something in which she carved a niche and laid the groundwork for the many American actresses to have done so since, may have rankled some people too, although its not relevant to the quality of her performance. Watching the Jan 24th released
Universal Blu-ray release, apart from this mild controversy that seems to follow it, it stands up well as a charming romantic period comedy. At its centre is a romantic in more than one sense hero, played by Joseph Fiennes and inspired, to put it kindly, by the real William Shakespeare. In the movie he is reinterpreted as a struggling young writer whose block may be directly associated with his rocks. Fiennes has a wide-eyed, likeable innocence in the role, scrunching up pieces of paper and throwing them into a mug from Stratford-Upon-Avon (in reality parchment was too expensive for this kind of recklessness, and Shakespeare probably worked it out in his head first). One day he may write Macbeth, but not if he doesnt get shagged sometime soon. He is to the real Shakespeare what Tom Hulces Amadeus was to the real Mozart. He isnt William Shakespeare; hes just Will.
The plot surrounds the writing and initial production of Romeo and Juliet, at the Rose Theatre in the late 16th century. It starts as a comedy (Romeo and Ethel, the Pirates Daughter) and becomes about tragedy and love because Shakespeare falls for Viola (Paltrow), a young lady from a wealthy family who has just been sold off to Colin Firth, a fate that many women could just about live with. Firth, who probably emerged from his mothers womb in full period costume, plays a fairly typical cuckold, but his performance is one of many that really make the movie shine; its strongest asset, easily, is its supporting cast. Tom Wilkinson plays a hostile moneyman who is humbled when offered a part; he was a wannabe thespian all along. Judi Dench makes Queen Elizabeth as sharp as vinegar; a worldly queen who enjoys the subtlety of wordplay and suggestion. She won an Oscar, for just a few minutes screen time, for the role, which was generally regarded as restitution for having lost the year before. Geoffrey Rush plays Philip Henslowe as canny but desperate; he keeps trying to get a dog into the act. Ben Affleck plays noted actor Edward Ned Alleyn as, basically, a modern star with a massive ego, and is very funny.
Also very effective are the sets and costume designs (the latter by Sandy Powell, who worked on Velvet Goldmine and is now Scorseses standard costume designer), which recreate a real sense of time and place, even if such a time and place never existed. The music, though it won an Oscar, is less inspired, sounding pretty much like any old Sunday-evening-BBC-period-drama score. And least effective may be the romantic-comedy plot, which only gets away with a few completely implausible turns because they parallel Shakespeares; namely, a girl disguised as a boy, or in this case, vice-versa. The device of characters disguising as the opposite sex worked in Shakespeares time because all the actors on stage were male anyway; its a problem for modern productions. In Shakespeare in Love, Viola disguises herself as a boy to get into Shakespeares acting troupe, and wins the role of Romeo for her eloquence. Uh-huh. Paltrow may have been selected for financial reasons, but the movie could have been a lot more fun with a genuinely androgynous actor. Furthermore, when casting the parts, why would she end up playing Romeo when surely the most feminine male would get the part of Juliet? Of course this allows for some last-minute crises that allow Will to play Romeo and Viola to play Juliet, but it feels like a contrivance.
That is, ultimately, the problem with this movie; its an intelligently written (Tom Stoppard shares writing credit) but conventional romantic-comedy that uses the genius of Shakespeares language more as decoration than anything else. It is seldom that we feel the link, in any movie, between the portrayal of the artist and the art itself, and that is particularly true here; this guy could maybe, just about, have written Romeo and Juliet, but I struggle to believe he could go on to write Hamlet. There is even a scene where Viola thinks Shakespeare dead, and we know it was really Marlowe who died, and behind the allusion to Romeo and Juliet it just feels like an overused element of dramatic farce. According to Queen Elizabeth, at a vital scene, playwrights know nothing of love. They make it pretty, she says, they make it comical, or they make it lust. She could have been reviewing this movie.
QUALITY:
16th Century London looks lovely from a historical point of view, probably too lovely on the new Blu-Ray and its a nice way to see the costumes and the pretty leads, but its not the best transfer Ive seen. It is sharp, but unless youre a big fan its not a necessary upgrade if you already have the DVD. The sound is 5.1 and sounds as good as you would expect. EXTRAS: Exactly the same as the DVD version: there are two commentaries, one from the director and one from the cast; an uninspired 25-minute doc that feels more like a promo than anything remotely analytical; costume designs; deleted scenes. Basically, if you have the DVD, theres no rush to get this. Shakespeare in Love is released
on Blu-ray tomorrow.