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Shakespeare in Love

3/27/2017

12 Comments

 

B-
​2.52

William Shakespeare solves his writer's block with an affair, inspiring him to write Romeo and Juliet.

Directed by John Madden
Starring Joseph Fiennes and Gwyneth Paltrow
Initial Review by Jon Kissel

Picture
​A film that persists in the culture due to its upset win at the Oscars over presumptive favorite Saving Private Ryan, Shakespeare in Love is one of those works that Oscar voters love.  Featuring a romance between one of history's great playwrights and a co-lead who'll put her life and position to risk if only to get on the stage, John Madden's film flatters the work of producing and staging theater, something plenty of Oscar voters are going to be far more familiar with than fighting in heavy combat.  Combined with the aggressive marketing and lobbying of Harvey Weinstein, the big win becomes less surprising.  If it makes sense that Shakespeare in Love could win Best Picture almost twenty years ago, that leaves whether or not it's one of those winners that is largely forgotten as soon as the envelope's opened (The Artist, Million Dollar Baby, A Beautiful Mind, Driving Miss Daisy) or a film that holds up and lives on long after its release date (Unforgiven, Titanic, The Silence of the Lambs, Amadeus).  The latter is a much smaller group, and alas, Shakespeare in Love isn't making it any bigger.  Madden and company are able to depict the creation and production of a primal work of art, but the greatness of Romeo and Juliet only serves to remind the viewer how mediocre the film surrounding it is.

Shakespeare in Love's most irksome problem is how much is happening and the overly cute way the film captures all this.  There's the central romance and its classic snobs-slobs love triangle, the production of the play, the warring theater companies, Henslowe's debt problems, actor insecurities, play censorship, and Shakespeare's need to get a set amount of money to get into a better company.  The screenplay by Tom Stoppard and Marc Norman gives themselves an out, as Henslowe says that theater means everything goes wrong and somehow it all comes together in the end, but Madden doesn't effectively tie up all the threads into one coherent ball.  Everything except the romance works out, which is fine, but the route there is insufferable and tiresome, packed with the kind of farce that Shakespeare might've loved and used in his comedies, but centuries later, comedy has changed.  Mistaken-identity plots are barely passable in small doses, and there are several here, each more maddening than the last.  The cumulative effect is me picturing Madden with his elbow bent and his head on his hand saying, "Ain't I a stinker?"  For modern audiences, it comes across as corny and frustrating.
​
The desire to mix what seems like classical comedy with modern touches falls flat on its face, repeatedly.  Shakespeare as therapy patient is a thorn in the film's side, as is the knowing bullshit of telling the young gorehound kid that he'll make his mark on the world someday, which led to me immediately Googling John Webster and what do you know, he's also a famous playwright.  The stutterer pulls it all together for his big moment, only to return to stuttering immediately after.  "The show must, you know..."  "Go on!"  These are Shrek-level jokes.  Shakespeare in Love can't pick a lane, wanting to be a modern film that is also heavily indebted to the plot stylings of the Elizabethan Age.  There's also a level of overacting here that, again, might've made sense when theater actors needed to oversell their performance but this was made in 1997 or 1998.  It doesn't mix.  Rush as Henslowe is the worst culprit, a sniveling toad who shimmies like he's being tickled when being tortured in an opening scene that immediately turns me against the film. 

The tone of Shakespeare in Love fails for me, which means that most of its subplots don't move the needle, either.  I'm not particularly moved by the central romance.  Colin Firth plays Wessex as a worthy villain, Joseph Fiennes is a fine romantic lead and a manic Shakespeare, but it's hard for me to determine whether Gwyneth Paltrow is any good here or not, half because I can't stand her public persona as the Food Babe for people with money, and half because her and Shakespeare's relationship is hampered by lackluster chemistry.  I never bought that Shakespeare liked her beyond her attractiveness and her flattery towards him, and Paltrow's Viola doesn't help the relationship seem less one-sided.  I've mentioned my distaste for Rush's acting, so yes, that character can be beat up and I won't feel anything about it.  The theater company war culminates in a hacky fight that literally has characters' heads being bonked against each other.  The only one that works is Tom Wilkinson's Fennyman the loan shark, who steals the film and sells the arc of someone going from cynical to passionate and falling in love with theater along the way. 

Aside from Wilkinson, what I most admire about Shakespeare in Love is the overall structure, where the events of Shakespeare's life are going to inform the writing of Romeo and Juliet.  It's easy to see why this won an Oscar for writing, as it's about writing and writers probably like to see their work reflected onscreen.  Block, a superstitious routine, inspiration followed by a burst of writing, scrapping some things and replacing them with others, taking hints from wherever they come from, it's all present, and for the viewer who knows what to expect from Romeo and Juliet, the film allows for that complimentary feeling of being a little bit ahead of what's happening.  Shakespeare in Love reminded me that I like Romeo and Juliet more than I thought I did, and the whole performance of it at the end does successfully put the viewer in the headspace of someone seeing it for the first time, with the requisite gasps and shocks.  The film's greatest utility is solely that, the capturing of a historical reaction and the thought that the feeling of watching a story unfold and knowing that one is seeing something great is the same now as it was in the 16th century.  It's not a feeling I had watching this movie, per se, but it's certainly one I've had before.

Judi Dench's Queen Elizabeth at one point makes a bet halfway through the film that there won't be a play that is able to transcend the illusions of the theater and say something real about love.  Romeo and Juliet is the subject of that bet, so it pays off, but if Shakespeare in Love was the subject, that's a loser.  The best things in this film are far away from the romance, and are heavily influenced by the power of the play at its center.  Give Tommy Wiseau those lines, and even he'll manage to do something with them.  It's not fair to compare John Madden to Shakespeare, but I can compare Madden's film to others, and it comes up lacking.  I was far more irritated with this than I was amused, and I had little invested in the romance.  There's enough here to say I liked it, but just barely, so that earns Shakespeare in Love a C, putting it in the basement for Best Picture winners.  At least it can comfort itself knowing that The Artist is hanging out beneath it.
12 Comments
Admin
3/27/2017 03:54:01 pm

Replies to Jon's initial review.

Reply
Bryan
3/28/2017 09:06:16 pm

"The only one that works is Tom Wilkinson's Fennyman the loan shark, who steals the film and sells the arc of someone going from cynical to passionate and falling in love with theater along the way. "

This is 100% the best character, arc or no arc. Watching him practice his one line repeatedly gives the viewer a tinge of empathy if you've been in any play.


"Henslowe says that theater means everything goes wrong and somehow it all comes together in the end, but Madden doesn't effectively tie up all the threads into one coherent ball. "

I missed this. To me theater is a gaggle of mishaps and mess ups, but somehow, when the show goes live, those things seem to slip away. *My only evidence is 3 High School plays, lol*

Reply
Jon
3/28/2017 09:17:59 pm

I could've worded that everything goes wrong line better. Everything does tie up into the successful staging. It's a good thing to put in a movie about performance and theater, but the way they go about it seemed like a miracle instead of something real, like the stutterer magically stops stuttering and is the greatest narrator who ever narrated when he's on stage.

Judi Dench won an Oscar for a tiny amount of screentime. If any of these actors deserved to win an Oscar without a lot of scenes, it's Wilkinson. By a wide margin, the best thing in the movie.

Bryan
3/28/2017 09:34:12 pm

I could have gone for a less-shitty stutter and been just as satisfied, and to boot, it would have been more believable. While we're talking about the end of the movie - The movie from the time the play actually begins until the movie itself is over is an A.

"Judi Dench won an Oscar for a tiny amount of screentime."
You saw this year's Best Supporting Actor winner in Moonlight, right? Same thing.

Bryan
3/27/2017 04:09:18 pm

I'm not sure what genre Shakespeare in Love is seeking, as a comedy it fails, as a drama it's pretty meh, and as a historical reenactment its brutal. However, taking the movie as a whole, it's not half bad. Jon has the ability to pick apart the movie making aspect of this movie, but when I watch a movie I often assume there is a little Gladiator on my shoulder occassionally shouting, "Are you not entertained?" or in this case, "Art thou not entertained?"

Weirdly, Shakespeare in Love is entertaining. If the goal of the movie is to provide a context to which Romeo and Juliet could have been written, it's silly and often times too cute, but it works. Shakespeare taking the summary of Romeo and Juliet from a fellow writer at the pub is cheesy, but it falls into a cheesy-amusing area.

Watching a full length picture in old English without breaks is damn near impossible, but here the mix between modern English and old English works. The rate at which the lines flow prevent the viewer from looking away for long.

This is a tough one to grade because if you dig too deep, it's not great. It probably won in award because of the "Movies about movie making" theme in Hollywood, only this time it's a movie about the first form of movies - theater. Shakespeare in Love falls into the Obama thumbs up meme. https://www.facebook.com/mediocremovieclub/posts/425599491123599

B

Reply
Shane
4/6/2017 12:20:08 pm

I can't believe this is a movie we're talking about 20 years later. Granted, this isn't a bad movie. It's something I would probably rewatch (even if it is 25 minutes too long). But it's not a great movie.

It's definitely NOT a best picture worthy movie. Though, reading other reviews out there, Shakespeare in Love seems to be penalized for winning Best Picture, which isn't fair.

Romantic comedies are rarely going to strike a chord with this reviewer. A romantic comedy film would have to add something unique or slick to be worthy of something more than a B/B+ max. (Think 2001's Amelie.) Shakespeare in Love, to its credit, attempts to add just a bit extra with the wonderfully written dialogue mirroring Shakespeare's own wordplay. However, whatever brainpower was used on the wordplay must have taken away from the actual storyline and the development of characters.

Will was charismatic and at times delightfully vain, but I didn't really care about him as a character. (And I still don't know what the whole other wife issue was about. Was that ever even close to being resolved.) Fiennes, I think, does well in this role at least.

Viola is just kind of the second chair whose only unique quality was that she liked theater a lot. Maybe this felt like a strong female lead in 1998, but it falls short measured against today's standards. Paltrow does fine in this role as someone who can memorize acting lines but otherwise is fairly unremarkable. Which is basically Paltrow in real life. I swear I'm trying not to let my hatred of Paltrow in real life color my review. I'm trying as hard as possible.

In the end, I just didn't buy this relationship. It never felt like love or anything close. They were just fucking. And Will had shown he'd fuck about anything as inspiration, merely using women as his muse. And Viola really had no interest in Will outside of his poetry and as an escape from her future husband.

I guess the third character and the only one with a love story that makes sense is the theater. This whole film is a tribute to theater. I'm sure if I didn't get annoyed with people who put theater on a pedestal, I'd be more affected by this. Also, They Came Together kind of ruined non-person characters in Rom-Coms for me.

The rest of the cast does well and Geoffrey Rush certainly eclipses his performance as Ra in Gods of Egypt. (That's a free solar joke, kids.) Imelda Staunton's does a lot with her facial expressions and timing that make her character work. Ben Affleck likewise succeeds as a brash and vain actor who wants to be center stage. While I thought Judi Dench was fine as Queen Elizabeth, I have no idea how or why she was nominated for best actress. She was just being stern and not taking any shit, which is something middle school teachers do every day.

In the end, there's enough wit and wordplay for good movie, but it was never going to be great without any real substance.

B-

Reply
Bryan
4/6/2017 12:50:16 pm

Middle school teachers. Hell yeah!

Reply
Shane
4/6/2017 12:22:46 pm

Why did this movie win so many awards?

I don't know, it's a mystery.

Reply
Lane
4/7/2017 12:34:46 am

When young, in school and crazy for a blonde,
I asked her on a date. On Friday night
I bought two tickets, with two chaperones
(just friends) we went to the Alabama
tri-plex screens and stood in line for romance.

Not a golden age of film, the nineties,
There were some gems to take a lady, though:
See “Message In a Bottle” anyone?
My judgement was not as firm in those days.
What I desired to see, surely she saw.

It was thus that we stood that summer day,
To see a film that was best of that year;
A film of hope, triumph, but tragedy.
The one best film of nineteen ninety eight,
A film of love: “Saving Private Ryan.”

It’s tough, now that I’ve seen “Shakespeare in Love”
To say I made a good choice that August.
After Spielberg’s masterpiece (and so much death),
There was no make-out or backseat secret.
She went home; I promised her a rom-com.

Oh “Shakespeare in Love,” I avoided you
And been sad since the year you won the prize.
I did not look on you, but did I er’?
Almost twenty years since my date night whiff;
Could we be ready for a rapprochement?

This film, in my thought, is a writer’s film.
Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard hit the beats;
They know their Shakespeare and they use the tropes.
John Madden captains, and it hits harbor.
I see why it won; and why I got none.

Hollywood loves to reflect on itself,
And high school blondes will keep you up at night.
Take someone to see a tragedy film,
You’re sure to go home without her or him.
So think about the ticket you’re buying.

I’m here alone, in Tennessee, and think;
What if I’d picked a different film that night?
It’s a weird thought; lonely and art driven.
But could the Weinstein’s have gotten it right?
And people might just kill themselves for love?

Grade: B+

Reply
Sean
4/28/2017 01:33:13 am

Long time ago, remember the premise and the tying down of the worlds smallest boobs but don't remember if it was any good. I'm sure Batfleck sucked though.

Reply
Cooker
6/6/2017 10:03:41 am

I knew of this movie, but for some reason I was expecting a straight-up period drama and not a romantic comedy/drama. I was surprised and I liked this movie.

Yes, I am a fan of William Shakespeare. I took a course on his work while at Harlaxton College and opted to take the day trip to Stratford-upon-Avon to see the “Shakespeare” sites—his burial place, birthplace, etc.

I enjoyed the nods throughout the film to other works by the playwright, and it was quite amusing to see the story of Romeo and Juliet fall into place. Of course, if we’re talking about historical accuracy, I had some minor issues—the death of Christopher Marlowe—but from an entertainment standpoint, it was all fun and enjoyable storytelling.

It was fun seeing familiar faces: Judi Dench as Queen Elisabeth, Ben Affleck as actor Ned Alleyn, Jim Carter (Downton Abbey’s Carson) as Ralph Bashford, and Imelda Staunton (Harry Potter’s Dolores Umbridge) as the Nurse.

I had some minor issues with the length; the film seemed to be wrapping up, but then we get an extended montage of scenes from the play at the end. It was well done, but probably could’ve been trimmed down. Enjoyable film for a Shakespeare fan, but has some flaws. B+ for me.

Reply
Blair
6/28/2017 10:51:35 pm

It's fine. C

Reply



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