Tag: Tom Stoppard

Shakespeare in Love (1998)

Joseph Fiennes and Gwyneth Paltrow juggle love and inspiration in the delightful Shakespeare in Love

Director: John Madden

Cast: Gwyneth Paltrow (Viola de Lessops), Joseph Fiennes (William Shakespeare), Geoffrey Rush (Philip Henslowe), Colin Firth (Lord Wessex), Ben Affleck (Ned Alleyn), Judi Dench (Queen Elizabeth I), Simon Callow (Edmund Tilney), Jim Carter (Ralph), Martin Clunes (Richard Burbage), Antony Sher (Dr Moth), Imelda Staunton (Nurse), Tom Wilkinson (Hugh Fennyman), Mark Williams (Wabash)

It’s become fashionable since 1998 to criticize Shakespeare in Love. It’s one of those films that the Oscar has diminished –you’ll swiftly find someone who’ll say “can you believe it beat Saving Private Ryan?” It doesn’t help that the film become a poster-child for Harvey Weinstein’s Oscar success, his tireless and canny promotion campaign for the film being credited for its sweeping the board. All that buzz is unfair, as it distracts from a hugely enjoyable, very funny, heartfelt and charming film, stacked with scenes that will make you laugh or let out a sad little sigh.

It’s 1593 and Will Shakespeare (Joseph Fiennes) has writer’s block. His latest play, Romeo and Ethel the Pirate’s Daughter just can’t get started despite the fact he’s promised theatre manager Philip Henslowe (Geoffrey Rush) that he’ll have it ready in a few days. Will only begins to find inspiration when he falls in love with Viola de Lessops (Gwyneth Paltrow) – little realising that Viola and the promising young actor in his company, Thomas Kent, are one-and-the-same. Viola, passionate about the theatre, dreams of acting on the stage and falls in love with Shakespeare (while keeping her Thomas Kent identity secret) – but her wealthy parents want her to marry the noble Lord Wessex (Colin Firth). Will these two star-crossed lovers find happiness? Or will their destiny follow the lines of the increasingly dark play about two young Verona lovers, that Romeo and Ethel is morphing into?

The largest part of Shakespeare in Love’s success rests with its script. The original idea had been doing the rounds in Hollywood for several years (Julia Roberts was determined to do it at one point, but only with Daniel Day-Lewis as Shakespeare, who was not interested). Marc Norman developed the concept and a plotline (originally much darker). But the film’s captivating wit and playfulness only really cemented itself when Tom Stoppard adapted the script into the frothy, super-smart comedy it became, crammed with riffs and gags about the Bard, Elizabethan theatre and show business. It’s also got a very funny – and humanising – idea of the world’s most famous writer suffering from writer’s block and then falling in love like he’s in one of his own plays.

Stoppard’s other trick was to repackage the concept into a delightful romantic comedy, centring the love story and downplaying other elements (such as Shakespeare’s quest to go solo and build his theatre career). With that, and the plot brilliantly refracting and reflecting Romeo and Juliet in tone and structure (just like that play, the first half is pure comedy, the second half darker in tone). In particular, the film is crammed with Shakespearean plot points and themes (from cross-dressing to plays-within-plays, mistaken identities, ghosts etc etc) all of which playfully  appear, cramming the film with delightful easter eggs.

It’s a celebration of the joy and magic of theatre – but it also hit big in Hollywood, because it’s essentially a Hollywood-studio comedy transmuted into the 1590s. Henslowe feels like a chancing B-movie producer, in debt who feels that with the idea of promising a share of profits (“there never are any”) instead of a salary, that his financial backer “may have hit on something”. There are puns about the unimportance of writers, billing on posters, the neurosis of creative people (even including an Elizabethan psychiatrist), oversized production credits, forced “happy endings” and sticking to tried-and-tested formulas. Gags call back to show-biz staples (“The show must…” “Go on!”). While it may be set in a theatre, there is a lot of the Hollywood studio in this.

But, with Stoppard at the pen, it was never going to be anything other than a loving tribute to the power of theatre to change lives. Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet is presented as a landmark in theatre history, a shift towards putting real-life emotion on stage instead of a few cheeky laughs and “a bit with a dog”. There is a wonderful plotline for Tom Wilkinson’s at-first all-business moneylender Fennyman, who discovers in himself a sense of wonder and delight for the theatre that melts his heart. (Wilkinson is outstanding here, a brutal man turned teary-eyed spectator, thrilled to be playing the apothecary). It weaves its charms so well about the delights of theatre, that you’ll even forgive the cliché of the stammering actor who finds his confidence on the first night. You even get a belting performance of Romeo and Juliet(with all the dull bits removed).

What really sucks in audiences through is the love-story – and Shakespeare in Love has a belter of a romantic plot. Riffing on Twelfth Night, As You Like It and of course Romeo and Juliet among many others, it’s a delightful series of misunderstandings, confusions and then passion, that eventually builds to an ending that’s bittersweet but true. It’s also beautifully played by the actors. Joseph Fiennes is so good here, a masterful display of light comedy tinged with sadness, so quick and electric with inspiration that I’m still amazed he didn’t go onto to better things.

Paltrow’s teary Oscar-acceptance has rather blighted the memory of her performance, but she has an earnestness and innocence that is deeply endearing and brings with it a radiant intelligence and emotional maturity that sees her turn into a realist. Wisely, the film’s ending sheds the other, minor plots, to hone in on an ending that is both sad and hopeful, that reflects real life (Shakespeare was after all, a real man married to someone else in Stratford) and sets up a thematic idea of love and inspiration being a life-long romance, that touches every moment of our lives, even when the loved person themselves is far away.

Directed with a smooth, professional sense of pace and joy by John Madden, it becomes a sweeping, surprisingly epic film, with a brilliant reconstruction of Elizabethan England and a luscious musical score by Stephen Warbeck heightening each scene’s emotional impact. The leads are marvellous, and there isn’t a weak-link in the strong cast. Judi Dench famously won an Oscar for her 8 minutes, but then its quality not quantity that matters and Dench’s archness is perfect for the role. Rush is hilarious as the grubby Henslowe, Affleck never better than his grand-actor parody, Colin Firth scowls expertly as “the other man” and Rupert Everett is dry and witty in a brief cameo as Christopher Marlowe, feeding Shakespeare suggestions.

You could say that Shakespeare in Love is just a romantic comedy. In many ways that would be fair. It doesn’t re-invent a genre, like Saving Private Ryan did. But, it’s a brilliantly mounted, intelligent and extremely funny one, with a superb script, some brilliant performances and wonderfully mounted. While it makes some good riffs on theatre, Shakespeare and the nature of love, it’s principle mission is to entertain – a big cinematic entertainment about the greatest playwright ever. And don’t we always say that comedy is exactly what the academy is biased against?

The Russia House (1990)


Connery and Pfeiffer go behind the Iron Curtain

Director: Fred Schepisi

Cast: Sean Connery (Bartholomew “Barley” Scott Blair), Michelle Pfeiffer (Katya Orlova), Klaus Maria Brandauer (Dante), Roy Scheider (Russell), James Fox (Ned), John Mahoney (Brady), Michael Kitchen (Clive), J. T. Walsh (Colonel Jackson Quinn), Ken Russell (Walter), David Threlfall (Wicklow)

Based on John Le Carré’s novel, The Russia House was one of the first espionage thriller films released after the fall of the Soviet Union, and therefore found itself exploring the curious impact of Glasnost on the games of one-upmanship that East and West played with each other.

Barley Blair (Sean Connery) is an over-the-hill publisher with connections in Russia, who is enlisted by MI6 to recruit the mysterious “Dante” (Klaus Maria Brandauer, a little too mannered for the film and under used), whose manuscript about Russian nuclear readiness has been intercepted en route to Blair by the intelligence services. Blair’s main contact is Dante’s former lover Katya (Michelle Pfeiffer), a woman trapped in political games.

Second-tier Le Carré is brought to the screen in a film that perfectly captures the authorial voice, but missing  narrative drive. Tom Stoppard’s adaptation masterfully captures the nuances and rhythms of Le Carré’s writing – the conversations of the CIA and MI6 operatives, their lingo and phraseology, are a perfect evocation of the author’s style, while Barley comes to the screen as almost the quintessential disillusioned middle-aged romantic: scruffy with a drink problem and a public school disdain for the prefects of the intelligence service.

The film’s other major positive is the central performance of Sean Connery. The former James Bond (then in the middle of a five-year purple patch of great roles which ran from The Name of the Rose to The Hunt for Red October) brilliantly plays against type as the dishevelled Barley, a man who feels like he has spent a lifetime circling failure and unreliability. Connery tones down his athletic physicality as an actor, playing Barley as a shuffling, hunched figure, often a step behind those around him. He’s also able to capture the romantic defiance behind Blair as well as a sadness and a self-loathing, his eyes showing years of shame at his own unreliability and the disappointments he has inflicted on people. It’s one of his least “Connery-like” performances, and a real demonstration of his willingness to stretch himself as an actor.

He’s well matched by some fine supporting performances. Pfeiffer is a very good actress who balances Katya’s vulnerability with a shrewd understanding of the compromises and dangers of the world she is in. Having said that, the chemistry between her and Connery doesn’t quite click into place during the course of the film. There are also good performances from James Fox and Roy Scheider as feuding intelligence boffins, and an eye-catching “love it or loath it” one from Ken Russell playing one of Le Carré’s quintessential campy, eccentric public-school intelligence operatives.

The film’s main weakness is that the actual story just isn’t quite interesting enough. The stakes never feel as high as they should be, and the unfolding of events seems unclear rather than carefully concealed from the audience. Despite the actors’ performances, Blair and Katya aren’t quite characters we can invest in enough and the momentum of the film too often gets bogged down in a reconstruction of intelligence agent squabbles. Schepisi films the Russian locations extremely well, but too often the camera lingers lovingly on a series of locations like a travelogue, slowing down the pace of the film as the film revels in its status as only the second Hollywood production allowed to film in Russia.

It’s an intelligent and faithful adaptation, but it doesn’t quite come to life. Stoppard’s script doesn’t carry enough narrative thrust and you simply don’t care enough about the fates of many of the characters. In many ways, a less faithful adaptation – such as the BBC’s recent production of The Night Manager – might well have made for a more compelling movie. As it is, although the film feels like an immersion into the author’s universe, it also feels like a dip into one of the less engaging and memorable offerings in his back catalogue. Along with the book’s strengths, it also carries across weaknesses. It’s satisfying enough and doesn’t outstay its welcome – but it also never really seizes the attention.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead (1990)


Tim Roth and Gary Oldman are our bewildered heroes in Stoppard’s classic play

Director: Tom Stoppard

Cast: Tim Roth (Guildenstern), Gary Oldman (Rosencrantz), Richard Dreyfuss (Player King), Iain Glen (Hamlet), Ian Richardson (Polonius), Joanna Miles (Gertrude), Donald Sumpter (Claudius)

The original production of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead made Tom Stoppard a sensation overnight. It’s a dazzling high-wire act of theatrical and artistic invention that deconstructs both Hamletand the nature of theatre itself.

The events of Hamlet are re-told from the mis-understood perceptions of Rosencrantz (Gary Oldman) and Guildenstern (Tim Roth). Their time is spent in discussions about life and struggling to understand their role in both. Throughout, they are prodded towards understanding they are just plot devices by the Player King (Richard Dreyfuss). This film essentially replicates large chunks of the play, with a few humorous editions and revisions and drops it from its theatrical home onto the big screen.

The acting from Roth and Oldman is terrific. The friendship between the actors really comes across in their chemistry with each other, and both are clearly relishing the script. The characters are a brilliant contrast: Roth’s Guildenstern is the bossy, confident driving force who is not as intelligent or incisive as he thinks he is; Oldman’s Rosencrantz is a sweet, passive savant-like follower with flashes of insight he isn’t quite capable of understanding. Both have excellent comic timing, Oldman in particular making his character completely endearing. They also have an affinity with the language that makes the more reflective passages highly engaging. Even if the film isn’t perfect, you should watch it for these two performances – cast against type (neither of them is thought of as a comic actor, or associated with either Shakespeare or scripts like this) both actors are sensational, surely one of the best pairings for any production.

The rest of the cast is also strong. Richard Dreyfuss (a late addition) is witty, larger than life and also subtly sinister as the Player King. Some of the “clips” of Hamlet we see could have made an excellent production, with Glen, Richardson, Sumpter and Miles all giving very strong performances.

Tom Stoppard directed the film at least partly because he felt if he didn’t no-one would. Clearly his experience with actors throughout a lifetime has really paid off, as judging from the excellent performances. What he doesn’t quite have is either a true sense of filmic pace or a real ease with using the camera. Scenes work individually, but the play feels like a series of sketches. So the scenes with the coin tossing, or the questions game (a link below), or the sequences where the players recreate the plot of Hamlet work very well. But the actual plot (such as it is) of the play doesn’t always quite hold the attention – it’s slow paced and the overall impact never equals the sum of those parts.

The attempts to open the play out also don’t really work. The actors move from location to location in Prague castle and some scenes are shot outside, but it feels like just moving stuff from inside a theatre to outside. Other than that it’s basically a staging of the play exact – without really changing or replacing the meta-theatrical devices of the play with filmic contrasts, it feels much more like the filming of a stage production. Saying that, the changes Stoppard made to the script got a mixed reception, but many of them work quite well: in particular a running joke of Rosencrantz accidentally discovering or inventing concepts as wide ranging as the hamburger and Newtonian physics (only to have these discoveries dismissed or ignored by the impatient Guildenstern) frequently raise a smile.

So it’s a stagy and slightly slow piece with some wonderful scenes but overall can outstay its welcome. It’s very clever of course, but that cleverness is so tightly linked to the nature of theatre that its impact can never be the same in another medium. But it has some wonderful scenes and two brilliant performances in the title roles. If you have any interest in theatre or Shakespeare, or admire either of the two leads, watch it. But maybe take an interval.