Shakespeare in Love

#45 in my ranking of Best Picture winners at the Oscars.

This is one of those Best Picture winners that gets all the crap because it beat an obviously superior film, namely Saving Private Ryan. And yet, I feel like the backlash against John Madden’s film is overwrought. Shakespeare in Love is a fun, witty comedy of a film, the kind of movie that people often say they want the Academy to award, a fun crowd-pleaser. It just happened to go up against one of Steven Spielberg’s best accomplishments that hit a cultural vein upon its release. Oh, and The Thin Red Line should have won.

Anyway, the story of Will Shakespeare (Joseph Fiennes) finding his muse in the Lady Viola (Gwyneth Paltrow) is a story that jumps head first into the lore around Shakespeare, the period in exacting detail, and revels in the words while providing that kind of look into an artist’s life that never really feels real but can often be quite fun as he pulls details from the world around him to place into his work. The action is centered around his writing of Romeo and Juliet (the obvious choice because it’s a romance and probably his most well-known play) and the business of theater. That business is centered around the owner of the Rose, Philip Henslowe (Geoffrey Rush), who is in debt to Hugh Fennyman (Tom Wilkinson), only put off from burning Henslowe’s feet because of the flurry of promises Henslowe makes about the upcoming play from Shakespeare, currently titled as Romeo and Ethel, the Pirate’s Daughter.

The problem is that Shakespeare is in the middle of a block, can’t write, and has no idea what this play is supposed to be about. He goes from inspiration to inspiration, zeroing in on a woman named Rosaline (Sandra Reinton) before she betrays him with the Master of Revels Edmund Tilney (Simon Callow). His salvation comes in the form of the Lady Viola, so in love with the theater that she goes to every royal performance in front of Queen Elizabeth (Judi Dench) and gets to the point where, with the help of her nurse (Imelda Staunton), dresses up as a man so she can act in the newest Shakespear play, taking on the name Thomas Kent.

What gives the film its charm is so many different elements all running together, but I think part of it is that everyone just loves the theater. It’s one of those films that takes a specific subject, like, say, food in Tampopo, and does everything it can to make the audience fall in love with the subject as much as those making the film. It’s an infectious look at the ins and outs of theater, its writing, funding, and all of the intricate efforts to just keep the show going on. It’s captured in things like Henslowe’s insistence that everything will work out no matter what, having no explanation for how or why a plague shutdown of all theaters would just go away, and, of course, it does. Because this is a light comedy, and it’s okay to introduce that kind of block and dismiss it just as quickly for a laugh.

There’s, of course, a romance to be dealt with, and it’s two people connecting through the joys of theater, Shakespeare figuring out that Kent is actually a woman, keeping her secret, loving that she’s a huge fan of his, and letting her become his new muse, injecting slivers of their little forbidden romance into his writing. It has no connection to the actual writing, influenced by the ancient writings on Troilus and Cressida, but it’s a fun romantic fantasy. The performances from both Fiennes and Paltrow are lively and energetic, more than enough to help buoy the action beyond its rather thin premise. Their main obstacle is less their class differences but rather that Viola’s father has agreed for Viola to be married to Lord Wessex (Colin Firth), a comically out of touch man who expects Viola to fall at his feet whenever he enters a room. I have to end up comparing him to Cal in Titanic, and I feel that Wessex works better not only because Firth is a better actor than Billy Zane but also because it’s treated lightly and comically in general. It’s a tone thing.

Another aspect that really helps is, touched on already, is the ensemble behind the main two from Rush to Wilkinson to Ben Affleck as the self-involved actor Ned Alleyn, lied into his role of Mercutio as the lead and steadily realizing it while also being one of the only people in the troupe to realize that he’s in something good, everyone else too busy and distracted to see beyond the next unwritten page to see the larger picture. That all comes together during the first performance, sort of done illegally but just within the law to get it going, as all of the actors work through their issues, including Shakespeare having to take the part of Romeo after Viola was found out, Viola taking the part of Juliet when the young man playing the role suddenly has his voice drop, and the whole thing coming crashing down when Tilney comes to shut the play down.

It’s a comic series of events, played lightly and entertainingly by a game cast that never lets itself take the material too seriously. It does try for some emotional heft with the central romance, working well enough but operating on rather conventional and cliched grounds while the rest of the movie around it is too in love with the theater and its machinations to really give the romance the kind of tonal attention it probably needs to soar above the rest of the film around it.

Still, the rest of the film is witty and fun. It’s a good bit of fun. I really enjoy revisiting it once every few years to rediscover its pleasures. Everyone is game. Everyone is having fun playing around an amusing script in a well-realized recreation of sixteenth century London. Sure, Saving Private Ryan deserved it more, but Shakespeare in Love is a fun addition to the list. Also, The Thin Red Line was the film that really deserved it.

Rating: 3.5/4