"Better a fallen rocket than never a burst of light."
~ Tom Stoppard, The Invention of Love

Friday, August 16, 2019

Shakespeare in Love (1998, R)

*Disclaimer: I remember that I’d had it in the back of my mind when I watched this movie that Harvey Weinstein was involved in some way, but when I didn’t see the Weinstein Company Logo in the opening credits, I assumed I was wrong. Turns out, he did produce it – the film just predated the Weinstein Company. Additionally, the cast includes Geoffrey Rush, another alleged sexual harasser. That’s something I ought to have mentioned when I wrote the review.*

 
This movie has been my list for quite a while, because of both my general love of Shakespeare and the fact that it’s one of the few Tom Stoppard projects I hadn’t yet consumed. However, it was one that kept getting pushed down my queue by other things… until now! I wasn’t prepared for just how delightful it is (premise spoilers.)

Up-and-coming playwright Will Shakespeare, a masterful poet who yet finds himself farming out plays to whatever theatre will have him to buy his bread, is afflicted with writers’ block. This is, naturally, a problem, especially given that he already has a theatre waiting for his new play: Romeo & Ethel the Pirate King’s Daughter (good title.) He searches for inspiration in the form of a new muse and finds it in one Viola, a beautiful lady stifling under the expectations of her parents. Viola has been promised to a grasping lord, but she’s a romantic who’s drawn to the stage and moved by Shakespeare’s words. When she gets wind of his new play, she disguises herself as a young man in the hopes of treading the boards herself, kicking off a comedy of errors crammed with cases of mistaken identity, deadly danger, and true love.

Really, an invented tale about the life of William Shakespeare is right up Tom Stoppard’s alley. I’ve always loved his talent for writing about history while simultaneously undermining its “accuracy” – in a sea of barely-true biopics that pretend fidelity to the facts, Stoppard’s works based on real people often proudly declare that we have no reason to trust what we’re seeing. In Shakespeare in Love, he does this cheekily, audaciously, through a steady stream of gags and references that are patiently false. Shakespeare has regular “sessions” with his apothecary like a psychiatrist, he evidently owns a souvenir coffee mug from Stratford-on-Avon, and a scene of him doing the classic “writer toiling over his words, ankle-deep in crumpled papers” thing pulls back to reveal that, instead of laboring at his next masterpiece, he’s been practicing his signature.

I’m generally not a fan of stories in which writers mine their real lives for their plots (I can’t help but feel it diminishes the impression of their creativity,) but I don’t mind it here because it’s so blatant and tongue-in-cheek about it. If the summary wasn’t enough to suggest the theme of “what if Shakespeare’s life was just like one of his plays?”, try this on for size. Shakespeare meets Viola at a party he crashes after he’s been jilted by another woman, they have a tête-á-tête at her balcony, and someone storms into the rehearsal of the Mercutio-Tybalt-Romeo fight to have a duel with Shakespeare. It’s on the nose, is what I’m saying. But it does so in a fun way, signposting the references with a wink and a nudge.

When it comes to the acting, let me start by saying kudos to Joseph Fiennes in the title role: I watched this movie while in the thick of The Handmaid’s Tale’s newest season, and I didn’t think of Commander Waterford once. He’s every inch the romantic poet, the charming hustler, and the madcap all in one, and he has splendid chemistry with Gwyneth Paltrow’s Viola. Emma gave me residual goodwill for Paltrow in period pieces, and she’s really charming here. Filling out the cast in smaller roles are Colin Firth, Ben Affleck, Imelda Staunton, and Judi Dench as Elizabeth I.

Warnings

Sexual content, scenes of violence, language, drinking, and some thematic elements.

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