Shakespeare in Love

Shakespeare in Love takes the dramatically different approach to the works of the world's greatest playwright. Rather than being a film version of one of his plays, the film dramatizes the writing of one of them. The play he's writing, of course, is Romeo and Juliet, most commonly referred to as Shakespeare's best and most influential piece of work. Like the play, Shakespeare in Love is a tragic story focused on impossible love. A romantic tragedy it is, one of the most riveting and heartbreakingly pleasant I've ever seen.

The film is a fictional telling of William's struggle with writer's block. To get over his dilemma, as well as deal with the tyrants who run the playhouses, William must find his muse; the one who can inspire his writing. Then, to his suprise, comes a young Thomas Kent spouting a dialogue during an audition with grace and vigor. The content of the speech leads him to follow Kent to his home where he finally encounters the beautiful Viola de Lessups. She's scheduled to marry for the benefit of her family but she yearns for true love and poetry. She's found what she yearns in the bashful young playwright.

The film's centerpiece is not William Shakespeare or his plays, rather it is the relationship that forms between the young lovers. It's a delicate, gentle story that is told with grace and fluidity. The script deftly handles the elements of their love: lust, their forbidden courtship, and their love and respect for poetry. Their relationship is impeccably performed by the two leads, Joseph Fiennes and Gwyneth Paltrow. We see the love in their eyes, the mutual respect for one another, the lust that threatens to overcome them.

The script, written by play veterans Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard, is a piece of genius. It cunningly integrates the spoken dialect of the time period with the actions onscreen. The best parts of the film are those where William and Viola are together speaking lines of their play while those lines are being performed in another place. The way in which William seems to caress Viola with his words is heartaching. Handling the expert script is director John Madden who takes his seat behind the dialogue with a steady camera. His direction, while not flashly, perfectly captures the mood of the late 1500's and the struggle of the young bard.

The production, replicating the playhouses in old England in the time of Elizabethan theatre, is stellar. The costumes are equally pleasant to look at, but aren't distracting. It's a well made film in all aspects, a model of choosing which is more important and focusing on its strongpoints.

Like the best of Shakepeare's plays, Shakespeare in Love is a towering achievement, a love story with gentle, magnetic somberness. The Bard himself must have had a hand in the writing and producing: it's the only possible way to explain the effect of this superbly crafted film. It just might be regarded someday as one of the quintessential romances, a true documentation on what true love really is.

On a scale of 1 to 10 bards : 10