In Love with Shakespeare in Love

Rating: Null/10 (24 October 2011)

Shakespeare in Love is that rare movie that is grounded in literature in every sense of the word.
The plot is ingenuous, especially for a modern day film, where plot matters hardly at all. To be popular today, a movie hardly needs a plot; All that it needs, oddly enough in this era of supposed women's liberation, is to be the very antithesis of everything female.
That's right, fair reader. Create a war movie, a spy movie, a brutal movie, that caters to male sensibilities, and you have a well thought of movie, here in IMDb most certainly.
Shakespeare in love is predictably ranked a lowly 7.8 here on IMDb precisely because it trumped Saving Private Ryan, a boring and pedestrian movie that catered to the masculine idea that if a film is about war and men bashing one another about, it somehow reeks of wisdom and insight into the human condition. The truth is, there is ten times more insight contained in the first ten minutes of Shakespeare in love, than in any dozen godfathers or goodfellas, but the male contingent will not hear it.
This era belongs to the men. Females are second class citizens both in the audience and on screen these days. How else can one explain the ratings of drek like Saving Private Ryan and the holy crusade which surrounds it and the perceived slight it received when Shakespeare in Love beat it for best picture of 1998? So as a woman, I feel it my duty to point out that women are not BEING SERVED by the current crop of films, and have not been served for a very long time. Long live films like Shakespeare in Love which dare to be different, and which give hope to those of us who put plot above brutality.