Empire/February 1998
Effortlessly fusing the slyly clever, the broadly
comical and the hopelessly
romantic, John Madden´s follow-up to Mrs. Brown
tinkers with history, art
and the love life of Britain´s most celebrated
playwright to delicious effect.
Art imitates life, life imitates art, life takes art
outside for a good
kicking and art gives as good as he gets. This is
postmodernism without the
ponce,
period drama without the pomposity.
In 1590, as the world of theatre struggles to gain
respect, an egocentric
Will Shakespeare (Joseph Fiennes) hits the plague of
writer´s block, unable
to realise his latest comedy Romeo and Ethel the
Pirate´s Daughter (you can
see where we´re coming from) without a new romantic
muse. Amid a hasty
and rather uneven first half-hour, a curious courtship
begins between theatre-
loving noblewoman Viola de Lesseps (Gwyneth Paltrow)
and the smitten Bard.
Naturally, the path to true love will be fraught with
mishap, social dudgeon a
nd bad timing. This is, after all, Shakespeare.
Circling this problematical love story spin a
catalogue of subplots.
Stuck-up buffoon Lord Wessex (Colin Firth) buys
Viola´s hand in
marriage. Rival Theatre companies vie for
Shakespeare´s unfinished
play, while he vies with archrival playwright
Christopher Marlowe
(an underused Rupert Everett). And the company of
actors - shaped
from the familiar mugs of British moviedom and members
of The
Fast Show - strain to pull the play into shape with
all the spirited
bluster of a show- must- go- on 40s -era Hollywood
number.
The jocular script, imprinted with Stoppard´s familiar
gamesmanship,
is a fabulous thing and under the assured care of
Madsen´s directions
grants the movie a delightful literary playfulness;
Shakespeare and
Viola´s burgeoning romance delibeartely reflecting
that of Romeo and
Juliet growing inside tha head of the love-struck
writer; numerous
references to Shakespeare´s other plays (try, at
least, Two Gentlemen
of Verona, Hamlet, Twlfth Night, The Tempest and Titus
Andronicus)
dotting the action; the presence of gothic playwright
John Webster
as a gore-hungry street urchin. There´s even an
attempt to resolve
Marlowe´s mysterious murder. There are various themes
- sexual
liberation, feminism, artistic freedom, the nobility
of acting and
the power of theatre - plus two duells, some arty sex,
cross-dressing,
and a genuine sense of Elizabethan life without
endless schlopping
about in mud and starving peasants.
But Shakespeare in Love´s cleverness doesn´t alienate;
the lavish
production, superlative array of supporting
characters (in-joke
Ben Affleck does a fabulous 16th century luvvie) and
triumphant
final third make it, surprisingly, the crowd-pleaser
of the season.
The central romance may not ring as true as that of
Shakespeare´s
own work - while Fiennes has never been better,
Paltrow frequently
seems out of her depth - but this is a great success,
bawdy, silly,
handsome, brainy and energetic, which says more about
that bloke
from Stratford than any smarty-pants lecturer could
hope for.
**** (Four stars) - IAN NATHAN
THE KNOWLEDGE
*The film´s premise is based on theories of a
mysterious "dark lady"
referred to in several of the Bard´s sonnets, a woman
who could well
have been the muse for Romeo and Juliet.
*Screenwriter Tom Stoppard also wrote the celebrated
Rosencranz
and Guildestern are Dead, a play (and later
screenplay) which cleverly
picked apart the world of Shakespeare´s Hamlet.
*Back in 1993 the film had Julia Roberts and Daniel
Day-Lewis in
the leadroles with Edward Zwick directing. That
incarnation fell
apart with only Zwick retaining a producer credit.
