The Importance of Being Oscar (Wilde (DVD))

Member Name: Jake Speed

Product:	Wilde (DVD)
Date:	14/09/09 (110 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Well made, good cast

Disadvantages: A bit flat

Wilde is a 1997 biopic directed by Brian Gilbert and features Stephen Fry as Oscar Wilde. The film is based on the comprehensive biography by Richard Ellman and concentrates for the most part on the years leading up to Wilde's infamous trial for indecency. It begins in 1882 with Wilde making a memorable speech to some miners during a successful lecture tour of the United States. Returning to London, Wilde is at his most brilliant and creative and quickly becomes a famous celebrity and the toast of the town with his unconventional thoughts, plays, gentle charm, flamboyance and legendary wit. He is soon happily married to Constance (Jennifer Ehle) with two sons but when the Wildes have Canadian Robbie Ross (Michael Sheen) to stay as a guest, Ross secretly seduces Wilde and makes the writer confront his sexuality. Trouble then looms in the handsome form of young Lord Alfred 'Bosie' Douglas (Jude Law), a petulant and spoilt aristocrat who Wilde falls deeply in love with at a time when homosexuality was illegal. As Wilde slips ever more under the spell and control of the moody and manipulative Bosie, even larger trouble looms in the form of Bosie's father, the nutty and violent Marquess of Queensberry (Tom Wilkinson). The Marquess is well aware of what his son is up to with the famous writer and he doesn't like it at all, an attitude that will have profound consequences for the life and reputation of Oscar Wilde.

A glossy and relatively expensive looking film, Wilde contains nothing terribly new for anyone familiar with the life of Oscar Wilde or Richard Ellman's book but serves as a watchable account of the great man's trials and tribulations and is always pleasant to look at visually with some pretty location work in the country and convincing period details and trappings. It begins in a nice offbeat fashion as Wilde speaks amusingly and expansively to a group of dusty American miners underground who are quietly enraptured by this gentle and eccentric visitor from abroad. Wilde can seemingly do no wrong but his life becomes increasingly complicated and fraught with risk once he succumbs to Robbie Ross and feels like "a city that's been under siege for twenty years, and suddenly the gates are thrown open." The now ubiquitous Michael Sheen is very good in the film as Robbie Ross and gives a touching performance. One flaw with Wilde though I feel is a strange flatness that pervades the film and presents the biography to us in a fairly conventional manner. Attempts to weave the story of The Selfish Giant into the picture through narration are quite charming at times and you wish Wilde had included more elements like this to occasionally counter the straight forward heritage atmosphere of much of the film. Wilde is never quite as enchanting as you want it to be.

Jude Law is not the greatest actor in the world in my humble opinion but he's well cast here as the tantrum-prone Bosie and looks strikingly similar to sepia photographs of the real Lord Alfred Douglas as a young man. Bosie is selfish, arrogant, immature and prone to violent mood swings but through his beauty exercises great power over Wilde, who Douglas likes in turn for his celebrity and artistic status as much as anything. When they dine out together in one scene, the calculating Bosie is quick to make sure they sit where everybody can see "Oscar Wilde with his boy." Wilde can't write when the demanding, attention seeking Bosie is around and therefore the relationship is totally destructive from his point of view. His obsession meant he was powerless to end things and break away. The hedonistic Bosie is someone who is very sensitive to boredom which produces a compulsion to shock convention, bringing Wilde into his secret world of brothels and rent boys in hotels. The film is obviously able to be a little more frank in its depiction of this aspect of the Wilde story than previous cinematic treatments, which helps bring an extra air of authenticity and realism to the biography. The chirpy cockney rent boy capers are also used for humour quite frequently with Wilde particularly amused/touched by this shadow world and the daydreaming characters that inhabit it, seeking to educate them on the idea of platonic Greek love and a better life.

Wilde is a sympathetic portrait of its subject and it couldn't really be much else with the warm and ambling presence of Stephen Fry in the title role. Fry is naturally articulate and amusing and his pleasant voice dispenses all the famous Wilde witticisms and epigrams in splendid fashion. "In this life there are only two tragedies," announces Wilde. "One is not getting what one wants. The other is getting it." The only problem here I feel is that there is, in a strange way, almost something too obvious about casting Stephen Fry as Oscar Wilde and I did find myself always vaguely aware throughout the film that this was Stephen Fry in a wig and period clobber rather than become completely absorbed into the character with abandon. An unknown actor might just have been a more interesting move. Fry is undoubtedly excellent at times though and handles the dramatic elements, especially some gritty and well-staged prison scenes, very well. Oscar Wilde, more than anything else, was known to be funny, witty, charming and cherished company and Fry of course captures these particular qualities admirably. "Alcohol," says Wilde, in playful mood. "Taken in sufficient quantities, may produce all the effects of drunkenness." Fry is also wonderfully defiant and touching in some of the trial exchanges, especially during the "love that dare not speak its name" speech.

Mention must be made also to Tom Wilkinson who almost completely steals the film from under Fry and Law as the permanently scowling Marquess of Queensberry, a drunken bully who resolves to take his revenge on Wilde and wreck his reputation. There is a great scene where the Marquess dines with Wilde begrudgingly but is soon completely charmed by him, conforming to the legend that nobody could resist Wilde's personality in the flesh, even if only briefly. "I wrote a poem," says the Marquess to Oscar. "When I am dead, cremate me. That's how it starts. When I am dead cremate me. What do think of that for an opening line?" "It's...challenging," replies a deadpan Wilde. The brewing battle of wills between Queensbury and Wilde supplies some of the best drama in the film, especially a fiery showdown that occurs in Wilde's house. Jennifer Ehle is excellent as Wilde's humiliated wife and Vanessa Redgrave also appears in the film as his feisty mother, Lady Wilde. "You'll fight these English philistines and you'll win! And even if you lose, if you go to prison, you'll always be my son."

Wilde is a well made film with some effective moments of drama and plenty of amusing Wildean quotes and speeches for Stephen Fry to dispense. The film is well cast and always quite absorbing, even if one is already familiar with the Oscar Wilde story and what happens. The only slight problem is the conventional treatment which means the film never really takes off or becomes anything surprising or special. Wilde never quite threatens to become the great film you want it to be but there is still much to enjoy in a picture that was obviously made with a lot of care and no small amount of affection for its fascinating subject.

Summary: Life & times of Oscar Wilde