Shakespeare in Love
film — USA — 1998

8.0
It makes me wonder how I managed not to see this film until yesterday. Not only did it win a heap of Oscars in the size of... a rather big heap of Oscars, but it had the screenplay written by Tom Stoppard, one of my favourite playwriters, the author of the legendary "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead". The title role is played by Joseph Fiennes, brother of Ralph Fiennes, but there is be no performance of Elton Wilde reading poems by Oscar Wilde in sight. William Shakespeare is young, a bit crazy and in a desperate need to finish his latest play "Romeo and Ethel, the pirates daughter". Yet when he meets Viola - a rich man`s daughter and a passionate lover of theatre - good ol` William falls in love and his never existing story about pirates falls apart. From this film you learn to know what the spectators at theatres around the world want - comedy with dogs and blood, blood, blood. Quoting the film about Ros and Guil: "Well, we can do you blood and love without the rhetoric, and we can do you blood and rhetoric without the love, and we can do you all three concurrent or consecutive. But we can`t give you love and rhetoric without the blood. Blood is compulsory. They`re all blood, you see." This film isn`t essentially the best I`ve seen in ages but it`s essentially a very good one.
2005-05-17
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