Shakespeare In Love
Shakespeare In Love - Directed by John Madden, written by Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard. With Joseph Fiennes, Gwyneth Paltrow, Geoffrey Rush, Ben Affleck, Colin Firth and Judi Dench. MPAA Rating R for strong sexual content and nudity. Running time: 122 minutes.
On the cusp of the seventeenth century, young William Shakespeare (Joseph Fiennes) is not The Bard of Avon, but rather a young, struggling playwright just barely able to keep his head above the Thames' murky waters. His writer's block extends even to his inability to create an appropriately elegant signature, much less a compelling story line for "Romeo and Ethel The Pirate's Daughter". In search of his muse, he happens upon Viola De Lesseps, (Gwyneth Paltrow) a woman of high station, but one who longs to be in the theatre. This is of course impossible, as women were not allowed to perform, and all the parts were played by men. (Gives me pause to wonder how some of the works ever survived at all.)
Viola dresses as a young man (yeah, right - she fooled me) to audition for a part in William's play "Romeo and Ethel" and in the process becomes romantically entangled with the struggling Shakespeare. Shakespeare finds not only his muse but his soul mate in Viola, and together they spin the story, the love and the verse of Romeo and Juliet in real time. Just as their theatrical counterparts Shakespeare and Viola are star-crossed and not to be, but that makes their involvement, excuse me, their love, that much more intense.
For a period piece, it doesn't seem to be weighted down the way that some historical dramas are. We don't have to suffer through pea-soup accents and inside jokes that only a few academics ever get. This is a new story, albeit a fantasy. We get the opportunity to create a lush new melodic myth around Shakespeare, and in the process, get to know what he might have been like as a young man. Or at least as we'd like to think he could have been. Apologies to Kate Blanchett, but Judi Dench plays the perfect mature Elizabeth - as spooky as she should be, but a wisened heroine to the story in her own right.
The whole story is sprinkled with wry humor and irony. Just my luck. I got stuck in a crowded theatre one row in front of yet another inappropriate laughing guy - I'm beginning to think that there are a whole lot more of them than I had ever thought possible. One of these days. . . .
This is a vivid, unabashedly romantic, well-woven and believable love story - what else could you expect, they were, after all, setting the stage for the single most elegant and tragic love story in Western Civilization. A movie like this could very well make love fashionable again. I hope so. That means we'll get more movies like this one. I wish I had a date, because this may be the best date movie of the last ten years. It doesn't rely on repentant ghosts or unwilling angels, or on unlikely pairs of people thrown together against their will who clash and abrade at each other until their resistance is gone. This is the real thing - a story about lovers - people that know what love looks like, how it feels and what a tragedy it is to lose it.
This is well a written, and I think, well executed film. I recommend it highly. Take a hanky.
I gave it four and a half cows.
p.s. If you are a Star Wars fan, and happened to also like Shakespeare in Love, do yourself a favor and look up "George Lucas In Love", either at your local video store or at Amazon. It's a hoot.
On the cusp of the seventeenth century, young William Shakespeare (Joseph Fiennes) is not The Bard of Avon, but rather a young, struggling playwright just barely able to keep his head above the Thames' murky waters. His writer's block extends even to his inability to create an appropriately elegant signature, much less a compelling story line for "Romeo and Ethel The Pirate's Daughter". In search of his muse, he happens upon Viola De Lesseps, (Gwyneth Paltrow) a woman of high station, but one who longs to be in the theatre. This is of course impossible, as women were not allowed to perform, and all the parts were played by men. (Gives me pause to wonder how some of the works ever survived at all.)
Viola dresses as a young man (yeah, right - she fooled me) to audition for a part in William's play "Romeo and Ethel" and in the process becomes romantically entangled with the struggling Shakespeare. Shakespeare finds not only his muse but his soul mate in Viola, and together they spin the story, the love and the verse of Romeo and Juliet in real time. Just as their theatrical counterparts Shakespeare and Viola are star-crossed and not to be, but that makes their involvement, excuse me, their love, that much more intense.
For a period piece, it doesn't seem to be weighted down the way that some historical dramas are. We don't have to suffer through pea-soup accents and inside jokes that only a few academics ever get. This is a new story, albeit a fantasy. We get the opportunity to create a lush new melodic myth around Shakespeare, and in the process, get to know what he might have been like as a young man. Or at least as we'd like to think he could have been. Apologies to Kate Blanchett, but Judi Dench plays the perfect mature Elizabeth - as spooky as she should be, but a wisened heroine to the story in her own right.
The whole story is sprinkled with wry humor and irony. Just my luck. I got stuck in a crowded theatre one row in front of yet another inappropriate laughing guy - I'm beginning to think that there are a whole lot more of them than I had ever thought possible. One of these days. . . .
This is a vivid, unabashedly romantic, well-woven and believable love story - what else could you expect, they were, after all, setting the stage for the single most elegant and tragic love story in Western Civilization. A movie like this could very well make love fashionable again. I hope so. That means we'll get more movies like this one. I wish I had a date, because this may be the best date movie of the last ten years. It doesn't rely on repentant ghosts or unwilling angels, or on unlikely pairs of people thrown together against their will who clash and abrade at each other until their resistance is gone. This is the real thing - a story about lovers - people that know what love looks like, how it feels and what a tragedy it is to lose it.
This is well a written, and I think, well executed film. I recommend it highly. Take a hanky.
I gave it four and a half cows.
p.s. If you are a Star Wars fan, and happened to also like Shakespeare in Love, do yourself a favor and look up "George Lucas In Love", either at your local video store or at Amazon. It's a hoot.
