| "There is nothing remotely academic about this film." -- John Madden, director |
| It's amazing what a little common sense will tell you. I could sit in analysis class all day highlighting collegiate terms like "mise en scene" and "kabuki theater" and listening to my professor talk about how much he hates Schindler's List (which isn't easy, mind you), but none of that changes the fact that Prospero's Books is still about a kid who pees on a pool of naked people for fifteen minutes. Oh sure, that doesn't make any sense to *you*. The point is, being immersed in artsy cinema doesn't give you some enligtened sense of viewership. The films you love don't get worse, and the films you hate don't get better. You just get better at clotheslining them. Take it from the girl whose major makes her go ostrich in her bookbag for like two hours a day while a group of her maladroit peers watches borderline pornography from France: not every movie with subtitles is cerebral. Not every movie referenced by Quentin Tarrantino in some obscure Asian cult cinema magazine is worth the stock on which it's printed. And no matter how many 'top ten' lists your teachers, the media, and/or director's-cut-owning cinema geeks try to brainwash you with: when it comes down to taking a personal inventory, jerkin' french porn will never...ever...be the new Adidas. |
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| CAST: William Shakespeare Joseph Fiennes Viola De Lesseps Gwyneth Paltrow Queen Elizabeth Judi Dench Ned Alleyn Ben Affleck Philip Henslowe Geoffery Rush Fennyman Tom Wilkinson Lord Wessex Colin Firth |
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| You would need less. |
| review by Karla Febuary 14, 2003 |
| (1998) |
| "I'm not a playa, I just crush alot!" |
| "Can a player show us the very truth and nature of love?" |
| Tragically, the premise for the movie was a good one. If Norman and Stoppard hadn't written such a crappy (overkill #4) screenplay and Miramax hadn't advertisted it to be such a "sweet love story" when it was COMPLETELY the farthest thing from one and Gweneth hadn't taken her clothes off and Fiennes could act, Shakespeare In Love could have been a great film ... |
| Screenplay by Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard |
| In critical circles, Shakespeare in Love charmed the pants off reviewers. I did some research earlier this semester (Hold the derision; it was for a paper) and dug through some newspapers for quotes. Something to support my argument about true love and good cinema, you know...convince me that wasn't losing my mind. And wouldn't you know it, I found but one bad review. Not seven, one. Out of all the critics in all the newspapers in all the country, only one of them has more sense than a steaming pile of poo. I was expecting to find a bunch of anti-Fiennes diatribes on the audacity of a pouty Shakespeare, but instead I saw things like: "Oh, it's the sweetest love story since Casablanca! Dazzling!" and "Gweneth shines like a star! Finnes is charming!" and of course, the inevitable "It's smart...AND sexy!" (Like we were expecting an intelligent movie with buck teeth). And so---my misanthropic expectations once again confirmed----I turned to this, a spectatorless forum, my only hope for solace in the whole world web, and screamed out a frustrated "BLAAARGH!!!" unintelligibly into the nothingness. I felt like Bastian; it ruled. So I found someone at the Villiage Voice who waves the pitchfork with me, so what? Big deal. Who cares? I just got lucky, that's all. You know that you can't fight the moonlight when high-riding country singers wear low rise jeans. Kids pee on pools of naked people every day just to piss me off, the fact is that there things in this world I just can't change. One of these things is the fact that, and I'm pretty sure I'm right about this, everybody but me *loves* Shakespeare In Love. My friends and my teachers own it. My parents would have ordered it via satellite last Christmas if I hadn't intervened with Jingle All the Way and a turkey knife. I'm crazy. Gwyneth Paltrow is hot (all people really DO want is a bit with a dog). I'm the only female in America who doesn't want to have Joseph Fiennes's children. If any of these is true it's because Miramax mass-brainwashed the nation. At least that would explain why I'm such a freaking retard, why they've got ten year olds eating out of Shakespeare In Love lunchboxes and I'm all alone at the loser table with my brown paper sack wishing I knew what the heck was going on. My life is like a bad dream where nothing makes sense and zombies that look like Roger Ebert run around and say "BLAAARGH!!!" and eat the brains of non-conformists. It's not that I haven't tried to understand Shakespeare in Lovers. I have given the benefit of the doubt; I have stretched my imagination to its very limit. I have put myself in the shoes of people who like Julia Roberts movies (and they're really tacky shoes). I have dragged the depths of percieved value for clues and come up only with conspiracy theories. Even now, four years later, I'm dumbfounded by Shakespeare in Love's multi-market success. Especially as a pseudo-chick flick. No pun intended, but screw the fact that Shakespeare has a wife while he's 'prompting' his star actress-----what is so, freaking sweet about a two-week fling that treats women like inspiration-whores, sex like an un-dress rehearsal and "love" like a four letter word? .... Oh, shut up. You know what I mean. |
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| greatest love stories-----that rather than simply a cautionary tale about two stupid kids, this play is, in all its suicidal glory, the Bard's greatest thesis on true love. Even so, Norman and Stoppard's screenplay still screws up the analogy when Shakespeare and Viola behave ABSOLUTELY NOTHING LIKE ROMEO AND JULIET. Since Romeo and Juliet's so misinterpreted anyway, I guess old Norm and Stop thought a little more stretching wouldn't matter. So they took two already unlikeable protagonists and made them act like such selfish wankers that you don't care what happens to their relationship. |
| Though I've many other causes for complaint, The Romeo and Juliet character discrepancy is probably the most obvious way in which Shakespeare in Love neglects sticking to its own poorly crafted rules, and the main reason why the movie just doesn't work. Though that's giving it a more "academic" critique than it deserves. Shakespeare doesn't have the good intentions of Romeo, taking his free milk with no thought of buying the amaciated cow. Viola doesn't have the commitment (or the girl power) of Juliet, quickly submitting to the terms of her arranged marriage to Lord Wessex with fairly little verbal protest. And neither displays even the backbone of a pimple-faced teenager, as the film ends with both (though they have ample opportunity to try and kill themselves, an ending for which I also longed during the film's two hour reign of terror) Shakespeare and Viola living on as separate entities in the name of "duty," too frightened or unmotivated to fight for the feelings they share, too cowardly to attempt a Midsummer Night's running away so I could use the word "bottom" in context. But oh, it's a beautiful story of undying love. Whatever. Action is character, and as the bard so aptly put it: "They do not love that do not show their love." How insipid, how weak-----how unlike Shakespearian love, not to not conquer all. Anything the Bard's ever written reels against this watered-down version of the male-female relationship. The love of Shakespeare's plays is revolutionary; it shakes mountaintops, stirrs oceans, bends the very forces of nature to its will. :) |
| And speaking of Forces, what's the deal with Ben Affleck's amazing ability to adjust his every character name into some form of his real one? Okay look, I'm not one to perpetuate an old argument----okay what the heck, so I am----but check this out: In 1991 for the TV Movie "Daddy," he played "Ben Watson." In 1998 (Forces of Nature) he amazingly transmogrifies into "Ben Holmes," an ambivalent yuppie with a fleeting taste for hippie kitsch. In Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back (2001), of course, he reappears not only as comic book artist, Holden (You know, J.D. Salinger was originally going to call his Catcher in the Rye protagonist "Ben Caufield." It's true. Swear. ), But as who else? Yeah, that's right. Himself. And now, in Shakespeare in Love, he's "Ned?" Psh, whatever. Spell that backwards and turn that "d" 180. Now what have you got? :) |
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| (gratuitous) SCORING: ACTING: "All lovers swear more performance than they are able," says Shakes. Fiennes finding Paltrow attractive? I'd believe in the Easter Bunny, Santa Claus, AND the Male-Friendly Lesbian before I'd believe that. PLOT / STORY: Stolen and butchered. Mass genocide could not contend with my hatred. SCRIPT: As stated, a wreckage of borrowed contexts and inside jokes far too obvious to be funny. We should ask John Madden how his double barrelled non-academic film missed the brain and managed to shoot itself in the foot. LANGUAGE / SEXUAL CONTENT: ... Do you really have to ask? CINEMATOGRAPHY: Nice. I mist admit...very nice. SET DESIGN / ART DIRECTION: This was also beautiful, actually. But it's still not worth the lifelong scarring of naked Gwyneth. I'd elaborate on this point, but I've already used more than my review's alloted amount of feces-oriented insults. EDITING: Ugh, these categories are so played. I have *got* to get another rating system. |
| So, to recap: Josie and the Pussycats, gooood. Shakespeare in Love: baaaad. Print, paste on index cards, carry to your next event. Fun for the whole family! |
| For those of you who haven't had the pleasure, Shakespeare in Love is a giant soap opera about how the lady Viola (played by a mop-esque Paltrow) ) inspires "Shakespeare" (played by a brooding Fiennes) with "Love", and even as their affair is unravelling, his previously dry pen is writing (connect the gaps, la la la la) the play Romeo and Juliet based on that affair. =sigh= Why are guys so stupid? I may not have so many scholarly sources at my disposal as Norman and Stoppard, but even *I* know that Romeo and Juliet sets a poor stage for a love story, let alone one involving the most venerated love poet in history. Two desp'rate teens meet, fall for eachother in fifteen minutes, parents disapprove, they get hitched and eventually kill themselves. And this is romantic...how? If the real-life, non-pouting, double-timing Shakespere were given the choice to base his lovelife on any one play he'd written, it is highly unlikely that he'd choose death beneath a dagger happy girlfriend. But let's suspend disbelief for a minute and assume that Shakespeare saw Romeo and Juliet as one of his |
| SUMMARY |
| How tortured souls lean against wooden beams |
| My common sense tells me that Shakespeare in Love should have been about a kid who pees on a pool of naked people for fifteen minutes, because maybe then it would reek a little less than the two hour piece of crap it ended up as. I sat through it once in the theatre and twice for an English class, and all three times wanted to shoot myself, because a.) Shakespeare in Love presents a gross misinterpretation of both love and Shakespeare, and b.) I'm the only one who noticed. On the pretentious arthouse end, it completely ravaged the Academy, scoring an amazing seven awards. Seven. And that's not a reference to how I'd prefer to be viewing Paltrow's pretty head, it's a hard cold fact. How in the name of the Bard did this film ever win seven Oscars?! What made it so impossible to turn down? Was it sponsored by like, the Special Olympics' International Foundation for Cute Refugee Babies and Puppies with Learning Disorders?!? Best Original Screenplay (Whatever). Best Actress (in bed). Supporting Actress (with two lines). Costume Design (Okay, I'll give it that). Art Direction. Original Score. It even beat out Life is Beautiful for Best Picture. Life is Beautiful, for crying out loud. That film was the best thing to come out of Italy since chicken alfredo. You know, I don't think the "Academy" even watched the limey Britflick. Gwyneth probably just mailed them all big wads of cash and notes about dyslexic puppies and then showed up at the ceremony in that ugly pink dress so they'd feel sorry for her. They were pity Oscars. |
| Shakespeare In Love |
| OVERALL RATING: NON, non, non, non, non, non, non non-Haneous! |
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| When Babe the pig is finally flapping his wings towards Nirvana and James Cameron's Titanic is crashing into icebergs in the lake of fire, perhaps we'll have finally solved the Shakespeare in Love mystery. Perhaps we'll find humor in poorly crafted inside jokes that any high school kid who's read Hamlet and Much Ado About Nothing could get. But probably not. When director John Madden said that his film demonstrated "nothing remotely academic," he was trying to tell us something. Sheesh, it's so obvious. Let's follow suit and put it in jargon that any film student who's read "The Screenwriter's Bible" can understand: the script just doesn't pay off. That's it, case closed. No talk of Fiennes' fruity wardrobe or that Thriller jacket he wears, no underhanded use of my many comments on Paltrow's haggard appearence to segue into the nudity issue (and believe me, that would be a long segue). We can't believe the characters really love eachother, we don't like the movie. |
| Away, you scullion! You rampallion! You fustilarion! I'll tickle your catastrophe! |
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| Take Josie and the Pussycats. When will the average Blockbuster-goer be able to walk in and find THAT movie sitting under AFI's Top 100 Best Films? Probably when the average Blockbuster-goer walks in and finds the Grand Dragon checking out Save the Last Dance. But as a parody of American comercialism, Josie still rocks to a perfect comedic beat. No, it's not "Oscar material." Yes, it was a box-office failure and yes, it sailed over the heads of the majority of its target audience (teenage girls who love Carson Daly...and text messaging). But when I watched Josie and the Pussycats, I saw a more articulate culture commentary than (everyone thought) American Beauty (was). Lack of understanding or proper exposure has resulted in many a masterpiece not getting the play it deserves. When you've got the IFC snobs shunning mainstream Hollywood movies because they're not independent or foreign, and the drooling masses shunning independent and foreign movies because they don't star Freddy Prinze J.R., well...there's an awful lot of good stuff falling through the cracks. Percieved value is what's gorgeous about art---it's what you put into it. A film, once put in front of an audience, no longer has any one implication. What's left of original intent after post production gets pulled across a reel and splintered into a million tiny pixels, creating a series of images that sends the same number of subjective interpretations pirouetting off into endless space. Members of said audience are subject to sudden random flying projectiles striking them, personally, at any time. That's why when you least expect it, you'll be watching The Passion of Joan of Arc and WHAM! One of Falconetti's multiple closeups gets lodged in your main artery. Some isolated component of the audio visual dynamic has impacted you for some reason, and perhaps your zeal for it bears no resemblance to the auteur's intent for the image. But it still goes straight to your heart, you little narcissist. Because it's all about you. Film in the heart of the beholder is a personalized shred of somebody else's vision. All that crap to say: the basic value of watching movies is in what makes your heart flutter, in whatever unrelated way they might inspire you, not in what the Academy might have to say about it. Being a good consumer is different from crafting a good film. You can learn filmmaking, like you learn appreciation. But loving a film is a reflex, like breath on the back of your neck makes your skin prickle, or a finger down the back of your throat makes you vomit chunks into a toilet. You could live in Videodrome for 19.75 years without ever even hearing of Citizen Kane and still be perfectly qualified to worship Fight Club. Do you need to know who Georges Melies is to enjoy Smashing Pumpkins videos? No. Do you need to study montage dialectic to fully experience William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet? No. Would you need more than two brain cells to pronounce Shakespeare in Love one of the greatest movies ever made? No... |
| Remember, kids: Knowing alot about movies may help a Critereon enthusiast organize his DVD collection, but that collection might still include Weekend at Bernie's. Knowing alot about movies will, however, always facilitate the expression of some person's unfailingly bad taste in them. Unless that person is Amy Taubin of the Villiage Voice. ::Ahem:: And I quote: "You too can be Shakespeare (or Shakespeare's muse) if you heedlessly throw yourself into a love affair that can't possibly last more than two weeks and maintain your cynicism about it at the same time." Bravo, Ms. Taubin. Bravo. It takes only a tiny drop to start a waterfall. The power of one!!! |
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