Best Picture of the year - 1999. Nuff said. Well, maybe not quite enough. :-) It’s hard to define in words just why this picture about William Shakespeare falling in love is so darn good. It’s not really exciting in a hold-your-breath-are they-going-to-get-out-alive sort of way. I mean it’s based on historical truth so even when the Bard seems in danger we know he’s not going to die. After all, he still has to finish the play he’s working on tentatively titled Romeo and Ethel, the Pirate’s Daughter. It’s not even really suspenseful, in terms of William and Viola’s relationship, since anyone familiar with Shakespeare’s will (in which he left his wife, who was not named Viola, his second best bed) knows they will not live happily ever after together. And of course it has a great deal of humor in it, I mean, Romeo and Ethel, the Pirate’s Daughter is worth one good laugh itself, but Shakespeare In Love is certainly not the funniest movie this year. So why does it so richly deserve it’s Oscar?For a lot of reasons. First, it has with absolutely no doubt, the most well rounded, realistic, just plain ‘these are real folks’ cast of characters of any movie I have ever seen. And these characters are played in turn by a amazing group of actors who seemed to fit effortlessly and seamlessly into the roles they were playing. There are supporting actors in this movie, especially Ben Affleck, who could have easily stolen the movie from its stars and carried it as their own if they’d been given just one or two more lines. Next, with one very small exception, there are no nits worth picking in this movie. No errors, no flaws in logic and no holes in the storyline. Everything just flows smoothly to its conclusion. The only tiny nit is that I doubt Queen Elizabeth would’ve have attended the opening of a play in a public theater as the movie would have us believe. That’s what Command Performances are for. And if she did attend a play at a crowded public theater it’s hard to believe she could have done so while dressed in her royal finery without being noticed. But there was no way for the story to progress had this not occurred and it’s such a small nit I’m almost ashamed to have mentioned it. As to the look of the movie; the outfits suit the characters and the characters fit their surroundings. These are not actor’s wearing costumes; they are characters, most of whom are not at all sanitary looking, wearing clothes which look far too stiff, uncomfortable and dirty to be costumes. The streets down which these characters walk are real dirt roads that are muddy, unsanitary and in which, if you’re not careful, you’ll have someone’s honeypot dumped on your head from an upstairs window instead on onto the street below. And finally; watching Shakespeare go through the creative process weaving bits and pieces of his life and the lives of those around him into his masterpiece Romeo and Juliet is as fun as it is fascinating.
But none of that is what makes this movie so special. What makes it special, and is so hard to set into words, is that occasionally in a movie, even a bad one, part of the movie will be turned and polished in such a way that it stands out from the rest of the movie causing the audience to think, "That was a really nice touch." And this is what defines Shakespeare In Love because every moment in the movie has the air of being so well thought out, so perfectly crafted that the movie seems filled with a hundred and thirteen minutes of really, nice touches. If anyone ever made a list of movies that were flawless it would be a very, very short list, but Shakespeare In Love would certainly be on it.
Average Grade: A+
