I decided to study this film as part of research into films about screenwriters or writers in any media. It does touch on some aspects of the writer’s process. The parts where Will has writer’s block and is looking for a muse are certainly part of writing anything. Inspiration comes and goes. And sometimes doesn’t come at all for weeks at a time. The current films at the cinema shows how many films are made without much contemplation. I’m not interested in any of them. Either they are too adolescent or are marketed like a brand ready be eaten or put on. Shakespeare in Love isn’t one of those. It’s a large Indie film that was made for 25 million and grossed nearly 300 million at the global box office. The cast is great and the story interesting. It won 7 academy awards and upset Saving Private Ryan for best picture in 1999. That seems like another age. I wonder if a movie like Shakespeare in Love could even get made with audiences the way they are these days.
The films major conflict is a love story of star crossed lovers. Will and Viola are just like Romeo and Juliet. They are doomed. Never to marry. Their relations illicit and, perhaps, illegal. Will risks certain death by pursuing Viola. The love triangle is complete when Lord Wessex negotiates to marry Viola. Things get more complicated when Viola learns Will is already married. The show must go on. Will continues to write drawing inspiration from Viola. He writes and writes until he completes the play that has come to be known as Romeo and Juliet. In the final sequence the play is performed for the first time to a rousing reaction from the audience. And the Queen plays the role of savior to the playhouse which has violated laws against having women on stage.
I thought the acting was good enough. Gwyneth Paltrow turns in an award winning performance. She shows how conflicted and repressed women were in Pre-Modern England. She is forced into a marriage which she had no choice. Only to find love with Will, but to learn he has a wife and was cheating with her. She is merely a pawn or a mistress. And Paltrow makes those emotions known as the film progress to when she accepts the role of Juliet. Until that point Juliet is down and out. The play was canceled her marriage a phony and Will already betrothed. That she comes back from that to play Juliet, then accept her fate makes a classic heroine who shows how far women have come in gaining equality. Maybe next up is equal pay?
The supporting cast around Paltrow is great too. Colin Firth, Joseph Fiennes, Geoffrey Rush, and Judi Dench all turn in solid performances My heart jumped a beat when Judi Dench spoke. Especially in the last scene where she comes to rescue and makes her statement about life in a man’s job. There were also other actors in the film that did a solid job as well. The film seems to be a stepping stone for some actors like Geoffrey Rush who went onto to star in The King’s Speech with Colin Firth who was also a role player in Shakespeare in Love. Ben Affleck also gives a supporting role as Ned Allyn.
The film is beautiful to look at. I was in deep admiration of the settings and costumes. The period detail is like something from a major museum exhibit brought to life. The streets of London in 1593 are brought resoundingly to life. Every little detail presented to give the illusion that Pre-Modern London still exists. I was especially taken with Queen Elizabeth’s costumes. She looked so very regal in her outfits. The golden sheen and peacock feathers were something to be admired. Similarly were everyone in their goatees, swords, and period costumes. I felt like I was seeing Rembrandt paintings come to life.
The fight scenes were a little weak. They seemed to me too fake. Not real enough. They did provide a heightened intensity to the film as it progressed to it’s grand finale. The writing was extremely well done. The characters are presented realistically. The subplots grow into a cohesive narrative that finishes well with Paltrow walking on a beach somewhere in the New World. The dialogue was well written with Shakespearean poetry blended into the Elizabethan influenced English.
There have been many films to tackle historical, period piece dramas and many of them have failed miserably. A few like Shakespeare in Love were successes. There is a whole treasure trove of films from the Pre-Modern days. The latest one to reach major distribution was Tulip Fever, likely to be Harvey Weinstein’s last film before he was scandalized this past year. Tulip Fever also deals with forbidden love in a time much different from our own. Similar to Shakespeare it is long on period detail and shorter on substance than Shakespeare in Love. Shakespeare in Love blends myth and a classic play to much greater effect than I’ve seen in recent films. It reminded me of the film Bird Man for it’s behind the scenes look at how a script gets made and all the pressures a production faces as it moves towards a stage or in front of a camera.
The film’s hero is Paltrow and with her comes one of themes. There is a distinct current of feminism. It is revealed in the conflict that Viola faces; will she find true love in a world dominated by men? Is it better to submit than to fight? She struggles with this conflict and we see that the World is the villain in this picture. For it is the World of class relations which keeps Viola in a subordinate position. She cannot be an actor, a playwright, or a poet. She can only be property in an exchange of money between her father and Lord Wessex. Viola can do little to fight against a society so stacked against her. All she can really do is submit and hope to survive with poetry in her heart.
Similar to another film, The English Patient, the heroine is conflicted, but seems to have no choice but to be a pawn in a man’s World. Tulip Fever is also about two conflicted lovers that are doomed to oblivion. And of course the play Romeo and Juliet is, perhaps, the classic tale of lovers against a World that will not permit them to live in love with each other. Made almost twenty years ago and now scandalized because of it’s affiliation with Harvey Weinstein, the film should be commended for showing the World through a woman’s eyes in the character of not just Viola, but the Queen too.
Along with other films that deal with the Pre-Modern historical period, Shakespeare shows us a World only accessible through art, history, literature, and best of all films. I was a European History major so I may be overly biased for films that deal with History. Shakespeare in Love along with The Girl with the Pearl Earring, Tulip Fever, and Cromwell, among others are a testament of how powerful a medium like film is. It can present a World that is gone from the earth only to be re-imagined in film.
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