Rethinking Shakespeare and falling in love
Australian Eye, By Gemma Files

"You can't take Shakespeare himself too seriously, even when you're making a film called Shakespeare in Love," cautions director John Madden during an interview. "For one, we don't even know who he was, really -- and for another, if you made a rollicking romantic comedy during which you acted as though he were this untouchable icon, the whole project would be pretty well stillborn. So we treat Shakespeare himself fairly lightly, as a person. But the work... his work..."

He trails off. Concluding, finally: "That, we take very seriously indeed."

And therein lies much of the attraction of Shakespeare in Love, already one of the most attractive and enjoyable films of this year. Rarely is the struggle to write taken as seriously, in film, as the struggle to gain fame, make money or lay some chick or dude. But Madden (responsible for last year's Mrs. Brown) and company (including screenwriters Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard, the latter an award-winning playwright himself) aim to change all that, just as Shakespeare -- whoever he might have actually been -- changed the face of literature forever by crossbreeding poetry, psychological insight and pure, unabashedly populist entertainment.

Which is not to say that there isn't a lot of groping for public recognition, money-grubbing and general bumpin' around going on. But because the main character of the film remains Shakespeare (as played by Joseph Fiennes, fresh from his role as Elizabeth's first love), it all proceeds from the premise that -- small considerations like money, power and general hunkliciouness aside -- the world's most effective aphrodisiac has really always been creativity.

When Norman and Stoppard first introduce us to the Man Who Would Be Bard, he's deep in the throes of a death-struggle with his own blocked talent -- breaking quills and staining his fingers 'round the clock in fruitless pursuit of a first act for his newest opus, Romeo and Ethel, The Pirate's Daughter. This quest becomes particularly important once it's revealed that Shakespeare's boss, theatre manager Phillip Henslowe (Geoffrey Rush, another Elizabeth veteran, but playing a part as far away from his character there as Mars is from Minnesota) is in helpless hock to a thug named Hugh Fennyman (Tom Wilkinson), who's threatened to flambé his feet if Henslowe doesn't come up with a theatrical hit.

But Shakespeare is suffering from a serious dearth of inspiration, a situation that only changes once he's accidentally introduced to his own biggest fan. Viola de Lesseps (Gwyneth Paltrow), a rich merchant's daughter on the fast track to marriage with a titled but poverty-stricken lord (Colin Firth), loves Shakespeare's work so much that she disguises herself as a man in order to try out for the part of Romeo. In a lesser movie, this masquerade -- and the courtship process that surrounds it -- would go on for hours. But Norman and Stoppard consistently succeed in foiling their audience's automatic expectations: Shakespeare and Viola are in bed before the halfway mark, at which point the real complications begin.

"If only from an historical point of view, the film can't be about whether or not Shakespeare and Viola's love will triumph over all," Madden points out, "because we know it won't. So the real question becomes whether or not Shakespeare will succeed in turning his personal joy and pain into a play which will live on long after both of them are dust -- the journey from Romeo and Ethel, a money-maker with jokes and a dog, to Romeo and Juliet, the Western world's classic romantic tragedy.

"Shakespeare is a very big deal indeed to me -- I've taught him, I've acted in his plays -- and I think we do him a great disservice by keeping him restricted to the rare air of classrooms and 'real' theatres. In his own time he wrote brilliantly and effortlessly for the entire social spectrum, and we need to reclaim that, to let movie audiences, now one of the largest audiences around, experience first- hand the intoxication of his language, the depth and accuracy of his characterization."

He pauses again. "Contrary to popular opinion, Shakespeare is neither earnest nor boring. And neither -- if I've done my job -- is this film."

Well, let's see: Swordfights. Ben Affleck in tights. A hilarious running joke about one of Shakespeare's lesser-known playwriting peers, John Webster (author of The Duchess of Malfi) that reimagines him as a street urchin obsessed by blood and gore -- "The Elizabethan Tarantino," as Madden calls him. A rollicking good time, full of genuine emotional pull and incandescent acting, and anchored by a passionate love for the theatre itself that puts to shame most human liaisons, including Shakespeare and Viola's. Much like any given Shakespeare play, in fact.

Yes, Mr. Madden -- I'd say you've done your job.

Admirably, in fact.