The Idea Is the Biggest Winner

Rating: 10/10 (30 December 2012)

"Shakespeare in Love" is one of the more decorated films in recent years. Two of its Oscars went to leading lady Gwyneth Paltrow as Shakespeare's love interest, the other in the supporting actress category to Judi Dench for a relatively brief on-screen appearance as Queen Elizabeth. The Motion Picture Academy doesn't give Oscars for conceiving the basic idea of a film, and I don't know if the idea came from screenwriters Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard, who got their Oscars, or possibly from director John Madden, who didn't. But what makes this film unique is its underlying concept: Shakespeare's finding of the beautiful muse who inspires Romeo and Juliet. Suspicion falls naturally on Tom Stoppard. His writerly DNA includes an earlier play, "Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead," which mingled scenes from Hamlet with plot and dialog focused on two minor characters in Shakespeare's play. In this film, Shakespeare is suffering from writer's block, a common enough problem to be credible even when the author is the prolific Bard of Avon. Ms. Paltrow's character is a young woman disguised as a male because she's obsessed with the theater, and women aren't allowed on stage during the Elizabethan era. The affair between them releases Shakespeare's paralyzed imagination.. Joseph Fiennes is very good as the young Shakespeare, though he didn't win many awards, Paltrow is outstanding as Shakespeare's girl friend/muse, and in addition to Dame Judi, Geoffrey Rush also turns in a fine performance as a rival playwright. But it is again the mingling of Shakespeare's words and plot with the dialog written by Norman and Stoppard that transforms this romance into a wondrous film. I don't know what Mr. Norman contributed but Stoppard is a well-known word magician, whose plays are possibly the most intellectual, inventive and funny body of work since the days of George Bernard Shaw. If I'm giving Stoppard more credit than he deserves, I apologize. In any event, Shakespeare in Love is work of genius in addition to being a lovely, watchable romantic comedy.