Funny and Intelligent - How on Earth did this win the Oscar?

Rating: 9/10 (17 December 2001)

One of my favourite movies. Two intelligent writers, Tom Stoppard and Marc Norman, combine to give us their vision of Young Shakespeare as a would-be up-and-coming writer, in the time shortly before he mysteriously changed gear in the mid 1590s and became The Bard.
The problems he faces in becoming established are shown as remarkably (nay, mysteriously) similar to those confronting writers today Â– writer's block, money, producers, and an abandoned wife and children (a woman of roperty - she has a cottage). He finds the answer in the form of Gwyneth Paltrow (well, it would work for me) playing the role of her career to date as Viola de Lesseps, daughter of a merchant rich enough to attract suitors from the nobility for his daughter. We know that she is certainly well beyond the reach (for marriage) of a humble player, but she is an early fan of the budding writer, even when nearly all she has to go on is `The Two Gentlemen of Verona'
The humour turns partly on the situation of Will Shakespeare facing modern theatrical problems (which however are not necessarily outside the range of what the real Shakespeare might have faced). But beyond that there constant Elizabethan in-jokes, pitched so that even those with the barest acquaintance with the life of times of Shakespeare will get some, while others are rewards for deeper study.
Many people who do not like the film ask how could it have won the Oscar for Best Picture in 1998. I ask the same question - given that it is so far superior to those normally recognised by the Academy in recent years (I mean, Gladiator? Titanic?! The English Patient?!!!). The answer has to be: it is a mystery.