To see or not to see... that is the question.
And I don't know what to tell you except proceed with caution. Shakespeare in Love boasts the year's best screenplay, Gwyneth Paltrow's best performance (equal to Emma, perhaps better), and an incredible supporting cast including Judi Dench in her most over-the-top and showstopping role. It is as lusty as movies come… but it’s also lust-filled, and that’s a different matter entirely.
Shakespeare in Love proves once and for all that the Fiennes family must have put something spicy in the baby food. Joseph Fiennes as Shakespeare demonstrates as much... nay, even more intensity than his melodramatic brother Ralph (Schindler's List, Quiz Show, Prince of Egypt). You get the feeling that if this Shakespeare had to fight it out with the English Patient over a woman, there would be the screen's most spectacularly bitter duel...and it would be fought with Ralph and Joseph's stares. Eyes intent as blowtorches, Fiennes plays Shakespeare as a man so hot-blooded that just to sit down and write he has to go out, intoxicate himself with lust, dawdle with tawdry mistresses, then return to his desk, spin around three times, spit on the ground, clap his hands, rub his quill pen between his sweaty palms, and then sit down and write as though he's were a wrestling champion. If writing were this much fun, people would buy tickets to a rough draft and shout, "Go, Playwright! Fill those pages! Pin this play to the ground!"
If it weren't for Gwyneth Paltrow as Viola, Shakespeare's dream girl, this play would burn itself out with overacting. With Fiennes about ready to explode, Gwyneth provides the cool. She is graceful, subtle, practically glowing as she moves from the elaborate ballroom dances to a secret rendezvous in the shadows. When she hears Shakespeare’s latest verse, she sighs, “I will have poetry in my life, adventure, and love… love as there has never been in a play….” (She seems here far more eloquent at spontaneous speech than Shakespeare, who is left stammering about his play’s premise: “Well, there’s this pirate…”.) Viola seems honestly enraptured by the language... the language, not the man. Even when she's trapped by Shakespeare's Death Star Tractor Beam stare, it is clear that she is thinking of the plays, and thus is swept away by the great creator, somehow blind to the fact that he's a womanizing fool as well as an eloquent scribe. Before they've even had an honest-to-goodness "Hi, How are you?" conversation, they're rolling in the sheets as if a meteor was headed to earth.
But alas those difficult times. Viola must marry Lord Wessex, a Disney-esque villain (Colin Firth) who is an investor in tobacco (Tobacco: that investment of villains.) Wessex cares only about her fortune and seems indifferent to her beauty, grace, and rumored virtue.
Virtue. Is this play about virtue? We are compelled to be repulsed by the idea of this forced mismatch of Viola and Wessex. We must, of course, desire Viola to wed her heart’s true love, Shakespeare. The movie certainly makes one wonder which God will smile on more; her “arranged” marriage or her fornication with her lover. I was leaning towards thinking that her “true” marriage was with Shakespeare… until one fact of the movie tried to sneak past the audience. Shakespeare is already married--and he’s abandoned his wife and children to run around winning the hearts of young Viola’s. We are given a moment to ponder the gravity of this, and for a moment I was excited the movie was going to tackle a seriously messy moral dilemma.
Oops. Nope. After the moment of tension, it becomes clear that marriage means nothing when the hormones move, and we’re expected to laugh off his past errors and run pell-mell after the lovers. We never see the wife left behind. We never see the children. This movie is as much in denial of the value of responsibility and faithfulness as this Shakespeare himself. The filmmakers seem to shrug their shoulders and say "That's tough, but here's Gwyneth Paltrow, and what married man in their right mind wouldn’t abandon wife and children to jump into the sack with her?"
It is this love inconvenienced by a greedy suitor that supposedly drives Shakespeare to his greatest work, Romeo and Juliet, and the play's debut provides the stage for the movie's brilliantly executed (if thoroughly implausible and predictable) resolution.
Still, for all advocacy of unfaithfulness and self-destructive behavior, the artful screenplay does offer a thousand true delights, witty turns of phrase, and truly stirring speeches. Geoffrey Rush, who has proven that he can play everything from a disabled genius composer (Shine) to a malevolent villain (Elizabeth), here creates another engaging character. A clumsy bankrupt theater manager, he'll do anything to host Shakespeare's next play. Judi Dench's Queen is a cross between Mrs. Brown and Jabba the Hutt, as intimidating, awe-inspiring and ornate as any character on the screen this year. Ben Affleck works hard to fit in with all of these classically trained Brits, and he doesn't embarrass himself, but one does pity him as he watches his real-life girlfriend get hot and heavy with Fiennes over and over again. Rupert Everett is a welcome sight as Christopher Marlowe, vital to the film's most brilliant subplot and twists. Even Simon Callow, one of my favorite period-piece regulars (the lovable Mr. Beebe in A Room With a View) storms in a few times to add some muscle. I kept applauding with all of the surprising cameos... what a dream cast!
But why, oh why, did they have to pour so much syrup on what might have been the year's finest confection? Shakespeare in Love is rated R for an abundance of nudity, sexual references, nasty puns, and violence. I am not against the use of nudity in films if it serves a purpose and enhances our understanding of the characters and their story; "Shakespeare in Love" is fine art interrupted by a gob of self-indulgent eroticism. One hot and heavy love scene would have given us all we needed to know: these kids are totally and compulsively infatuated with each other. The audience at the screening I attended began to laugh about halfway through when they were supposed to be sighing romantically.
This film is wrongfully named. It has powerful language and a wealth of talent as its distinguishing marks, but it shies away, curiously, from poetry, subtlety, and art whenever the lovers embrace, and we’re left with no heroes or heroines worth swooning for. It should have been called Shakespeare in Lust.
RECOMMENDATION: If you enjoy this film, track down and rent the other Shakespeare variation written by the same screenwriter, Tom Stoppard, titled Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. In this critic's opinion, it is an even more clever and inventive script, featuring fine performances by the young Gary Oldman and Tim Roth, and Richard Dreyfuss!
Jeffrey Overstreet writes regular reviews, news, and
essays on the arts and Christian perspectives at the Green
Lake Reflections web page and in The Crossing, a magazine
for Christian artists. He has been published in Christianity and
the Arts Magazine, The New Christian Herald, and AngliCan
Arts Magazine, and he is a founding member of Promontory Artists Association.
You can contact Jeffrey at Promontory@aol.com .
