EPEOLATRY

MOVIE 4.5

Shakespeare in Love (1998)

Dir: John Madden

“I will have poetry in my life. And adventure. And love. Love above all. No… not the artful postures of love, not playful and poetical games of love for the amusement of an evening, but love that… overthrows life. Unbiddable, ungovernable - like a riot in the heart, and nothing to be done, come ruin or rapture. Love - like there has never been in a play.”

This is not an accurate portrayal of one of the greatest writer in English language - world’s preeminent dramatist William Shakespeare; but is a romantic comedy at Elizabethan era with quite accurate historical background. Here, Shakespeare (Joseph Fiennes) an out of cash and inspiration - play writer falls in love with a noble woman Viola De Lesseps (Gwyneth Paltrow) and is inspired to create ‘Romeo and Juliet’.

Talking about acting; Gwyneth Paltrow was so great - both of her part as an actor and a lover were so awesome, she delivers the lines from Shakespearean literature beautifully, Judi Dench who played Queen Elizabeth appeared thrice but just briefly totally stole the show, she was so noble, authoritarian and made quite funny jokes. There’s Ben Affleck too, who was so good to play Ned Alleyn - a famous actor of that time. Joseph Fiennes, Geoffrey Rush, Tom Wilkinson and Colin Firth were also so good.

It was a good love story but the main thing was that it was a tribute to dreamers - how producers, actors, writers passionately comes up to create something magnificent that anyone hasn’t done before - the second thing was that this movie is quite Romeo and Juliet themed where Shakespeare is a poor writer who falls for a rich woman who is to be married without her consent on the order of Queen Elizabeth (Judi Dench). Viola loves plays and is motivated to act in Shakespeare’s play as is influenced by him, so she disguises herself as a man as women weren’t allowed to act in theatre in that times and qualifies in the crew. We see Viola’s husband as an antagonist, thus various clashes arises between noble men and players.

The best thing about this movie was Costume Designing - every dress was a work of art and perfectly described the times. The language was so accurate to be the ‘Old English’ of that age. The Script was written and delivered so flawlessly. The movie has a very good flow - I can’t say if there’s any moment that I felt off. The third act is best and we got to see the Fiction of Romeo and Juliet being the elements of Shakespeare’s real life (at least in this movie) and at the climax we see some parts of play which are very well played.

This movie has won 7 Academy Awards including Best Picture but I think ‘Saving Private Ryan’ was far better choice for Best Picture of 1998 to say at least.