vastly over-rated, emotionally fraudulent film - without a clue about Shakespeare

Rating: 3/10 (2 February 1999)

This was a film I had truly wanted to see -- since I'm a history student, a theater buff, and a great Shakespeare fan. I'd also heard or read a lot of critical raves. I was very disappointed. To make matters worse, I saw it on the night before the Golden Globes aired, and then it went and won so many awards! I can't believe I saw the same movie everyone was praising.
What I got was some pretty surface historical recreation, some attractive actors doing their best, some hoary, but still funny theatrical jokes -- and a very clever, but emotionally fraudulent script, that didn't illuminate anything about "Romeo and Juliet", the nature of love, Shakespeare's life or process of composition, or much of anything else.
Of course, I realize the film was fiction, but fiction must at least be imaginatively or emotionally plausible, even if not historically accurate.
I am a romantic at heart, and "Romeo and Juliet" is one of my favorite Shakespeare plays. But I have a hard time with the notion that you could explain the appeal of this great play about a love that is eternal, with no room for compromise, that fights all obstacles, with no alternative but death, by what actually supposedly happens between Shakespeare and Viola in the film. What we have is a writer who is rather cynically hoping to find a woman he can use (use is the word) to get his ahem, quill working (the anachronistic Freudian jokes about this set my teeth on edge). After trying to interest one woman, Rosaline, he goes for Viola. When he first sees her and is inspired by her, he says "Was I a poet before now?" The Romeo of the play, you might remember, says "loved I ere now?" (Think it over -- there's a big difference). This callous fellow inveigles Viola into an affair, conveniently forgetting to tell her he's married. Their affair can't and doesn't last, nor do they seem to think it should. What does this 1990's style "Melrose place" affair have to do with the type of feeling embodied by Shakespeare's young lovers? You might as well say that the romantic woes of Bill and Monica were the source for "Romeo and Juliet"! The truth is that people in the 1590's really did think very differently about the subject of love than they evidently do in the 1990's. (R+J is a play, remember, is a play about marriage). The authors of the screenplay don't even seem to have noticed this historical discrepancy, or to have made any use of the irony it implies. Apparently, most of the audience didn't notice it either.
In addition, why is so much being made of Viola as some kind of proto-feminist heroine? The filmmakers seem to have prided themselves on this, though they haven't achieved plausibility even here. If Viola is so independent-minded, why doesn't she ever make more than a token protest about her arranged marriage to that pompous jerk Wessex? She slaps his face in one scene, then a few scenes later, inexplicably decides to marry him. Did I miss something? I don't think the screenwriters really devoted much attention to consistency in her character.
As I mentioned about, I did like the attractive cast. Both Joseph Fiennes and Gwynneth Paltrow are fabulous-looking, particularly in their period costumes, and they both have a lot of charm. I think Paltrow in particular is developing into a fine actress -- I only wish she had been given something better to play. Geoffrey Rush was funny, Ben Affleck, too. Some of the comedy about the woes of trying to mount a theatrical production was good, even if broadly played. But it was no substitute for what wasn't there.
A film that really delves into Shakespeare -- beautiful idea. I hope someday one will be made.
(TG-5, I agree with you. The only really intelligent view I read was the one in the Village Voice).