Customer Reviews

Wilde (Special Edition)

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3 star:		(8)
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I ordered this DVD because the audio format was described as DTS Surround Sound on your Web site. I was very disappointed to see on the back cover of the item that it was on dolby surround; not DTS.

Wilde is a beautifully made film, and I agree with the other customer reviews that found it an impressive portrait of the writer's life. As an expert on Wilde myself (I am writing my master's thesis on him) I would like to comment on some of the objections raised to its handling of his life by scholars and critics. Several scholars whose comments on the film I have read (they know who they are) have pointed out its factual inaccuracies, and have complained about its emphasis on Wilde's love life rather than his literary career. Admittedly, if the viewer wants a more scrupulous account of Wilde's life than is given by this film, she/he would be better off reading Ellmann's biography, on which the film is rather loosely based. Artistic liberties aside, I think we would all agree that the sight of a man making love is more dramatically interesting than the sight of him writing; the film's depiction of Wilde's intimate experiences, speculative as they are, serve to give us additional insight into who he was and the emotions that drove him. The film's greatest strength is its depiction of the neurotic relationship between Wilde and Douglas, which helps the viewer to understand how Wilde got into the jam he did.
I'm sure nobody can complain about the performances in the film, which are dead on, especially that of Stephen Fry in the title role; unlike many actors portraying famous people he not only acts as Wilde must have acted but looks quite like him, which adds to the film's feeling of verisimilitude. Unfortunately, since we don't have a DVD player yet, this review is based on my copy of the video. Hopefully, I'll be able to get the DVD later to examine the extras.

My introduction to Oscar Wilde consisted of three disparate sources. First, I read "The Importance of Being Earnest," the wittiest play ever written in the English language. Second, there was Monty Python's Oscar Wilde sketch, where Wilde, James McNeil Whistler and George Bernard Shaw force each other to turn insults into compliments for the Prince of Wales. Third, there was the "Masterpiece Theater" mini-series "Lillie," in which Peter Egan played Wilde and where for the first time I heard the speech from Wilde's court case where he explains "the love that dare not speak its name." It is one of the most unforgettable declarations from the docket in human history and I think I just about have it memorized because it was really burned into my mind the first time I heard it.

When I watched "Wilde," my knowledge and understanding of Oscar Wilde was extended in several key ways. In playing the title role actor Stephen Fry makes Wilde seem less the dandy and more the kindly man he must have been to be put in the situation that caused his down fall. In contrast, Lord Alfred Douglas (Jude Law), known as "Bosie," might be beautiful of face but it is most decidedly skin deep. He is an ugly human being and when Wilde does what he does out of the goodness of his heart, the tragedy that it is for somebody who does not deserve it. I had not really thought much of Bosie before, but after watching "Wilde" I consider him a most despicable figure. Wilde was in prison within three months after the opening of "The Importance of Being Earnest," and the thought of what has been lost to literature and drama is rather sickening. It is only in the film's final scene that for the first time I found myself thinking of Oscar Wilde as a pathetic figure, and again it was because of Bosie.

I had long appreciated the irony that despite his homosexuality Wilde truly loved his wife Constance (Jennifer Ehle), but in Julian Mitchell's screenplay, based on Richard Ellmann's noted biography, I learn an even greater irony with regards to Wilde's downfall, namely that his physical relationship with Bosie had been of short duration and that they were not lovers at the time of the libel suit involving the Marquess of Queensberry (Tom Wilkinson). In that regard this 1997 film enhances the tragic aspects of the story. Of course, the essence of the tragedy is articulated by Wilde himself, who declares: "In this life there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants. The other is getting it."

This movie is everything about why I love the courageous, crisp, brainy and brilliant British media. Stephen Fry is a gem who could recite the phone book and turn it into a soliloquy on the cruelty of human history. His voice is marvelous, and he rolls his consonants around in his mouth like Jordan almonds -- all without affectation, somehow. Wilde's many quips and epigrams drop out of his mouth without the slightest artificiality, natural and thoughtless as dew rolling off a leaf. Jude Law's Bosie is terrifyingly unstable, and his beauty serves only to throw his instability into high relief. You can't take your eyes off of him while he's on screen at the same time you want to turn away and skitter under the cabinets to stop watching.

The rest of the supporting cast is magnificent (if only the American film industry permitted its great actresses to work past the age of 40, we might boast such luminaries as Vanessa Redgrave and Zoe Wanamaker someday as well as Helen Mirren and Judi Dench!), the directing is flawless, the costumes and set design stunning but never overstated. All of it is used only to support the story, and as beautiful as it all is, it never pulls you out of the story or distracts you, only providing a seamless and textured foundation for the action.

I admit, I'm somewhat amused at the reviewers who imagine that this film shouldn't have concentrated so much on Wilde's sexuality. This is the story of him as much his work -- and his work at any rate was quite informed by his sexuality, nebulous at best during a time when anything but rigid adherence to a particularly joyless version of heterosexuality was a sin and a crime. Beautiful as this film is (and delicious as it is to see so many gorgeous young British men running around au naturel), it breaks your heart with the realization that happiness and fulfillment in life, as well as success and self-respect, can be so profoundly influenced by nothing more significant than the year in which one was born. In a hundred years, what will people be saying about the great women, gays and lesbians, and other minorities who lived in our time?

If anything, the value of true love and compassion, unfettered by social interdictions, and how the Victorian attitudes made only a certain kind of love a crime, is the driving force behind Wilde. The bio-movie of legendary playwright and wit Oscar Wilde begins with his trip to Leadville, Colorado in 1882, where a seam in a silver mine has been named in his honour. Down the mine, he tells the story of The King's Dream, about how the king has dreams revealing how lesser class people have toiled and suffered so that nobles can wear finery and wield sceptres and ornaments of silver and gold.

Wilde seems to have it, talent, wit, a nice wife, two children. It's at the reception for his play, Lady Windermere's Fan, that we see the beginning of the end. There, Wilde is introduced to Lord Alfred Douglas, nicknamed "Bosie", a handsome blond who finds conventional morality stifling, such as his enjoyment of other men, but whose selfishly immature, egotistic nature comes out in an ugly way later in the movie. "Bosie" admires Wilde. "You use wit like a knife, cut through all those starched shirt fronts. You draw blood. It's magnificent," he tells him.

Bosie introduces Wilde to secret parlors where there are others who have homosexual leanings, but he seems proud to display himself as "Wilde's boy", wanting the whole world to know, whereas Wilde is a bit more on the cautious and side. Yet he counsels Bosie, who is then in a petulant pique that Wilde has to work on his play instead of having fun, that "pleasure have to be earned and paid for." And yet he is patient and forgiving towards the lad.

The villain of this piece is Bosie's brutish father, John Sholto Douglas, better known as the 9th marquis of Queensbury, he who invented the boxing rules such as wearing gloves, the ten second count, and rounds. He strongly disapproves of Bosie's friendship with Wilde and sets about verbally intimidating both.

The attitudes of the stuffed shirts in Victorian England can be found in a lady's comment on censorship: "There must be censorship. All people would say what they meant, and then where would we be?" Wilde too gives a view of the stifled times when he says that if his son grew up, "he must do as his nature dictates, as I should have done." But couldn't, one should add.

At various parts of the movie, Wilde's story of "The Selfish Giant" is narrated to match the scene or Wilde's feelings.

All throughout, Wilde's wit and observations on human nature are heard. Examples: "Give a man a mask and he'll tell you the truth." This in turn leads to a conversation about The Picture Of Dorian Gray, a novel about "the masks we wear as faces, the faces we wear as masks" that lost the Wildes their respectability for its unveiling the hypocritical veneer of Victorian gentility. But the most important is this: "In this world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants. The other is getting."

Those who know of Wilde's life knows how it'll end, but there are some sobering narrated observations that reflect the suffering he underwent: "Life cheats us with shadows. We ask it for pleasure, it gives it to us with bitterness and disappointment in its train." Or the way people destroy the thing they love most:

Some do it with a bitter look
some with a flattering word
the coward with a kiss
The brave man with a sword
some kill their love when they are young
and some when they are old
some strangle with the hands of lust
some with the hands of gold
the kindest use a knife
because the dead so soon grow cold

Stephen Fry, best known as Jeeves in the Jeeves and Wooster series does a top-notch job in portraying the playwright and wit. His Wilde is suave, charming, loving and understanding to his wife, children, and Bosie, and in the end, unwilling to perjure himself and his beliefs despite its meaning his fall from grace. Jude Law does good as Bosie, but Jennifer Ehle also deserves credit as the soft-spoken but loyal and beautiful Constance Wilde.

I have somewhat conflicting opinions about this film, just as I have conflicting opinions about Oscar Wilde himself. No one can dispute the fact that Wilde was a literary genius; ample proof of this is found in the successful rehabilitation of his work in reputation long before the aspects of his infamous lifestyle became acceptable to even a minor fraction of society. If, as hardly seems possible, you aren't aware of the scandal associated with Wilde's downfall, this film spares the viewer few of the most intimate of details (in other words, there is male nudity ' and plenty of it). It's a brave film, featuring a most accomplished class of actors and actresses turning in terrific performances, but it doesn't feel perfectly complete to me. Rather than delivering a flamboyant Oscar Wilde who truly reveled in his own audacity, this Oscar Wilde seemed subdued and sometimes even haunted by the lifestyle he led. While his wit is demonstrated quite often, this didn't quite seem like the young man who became the toast of London before he met with his first literary success and reveled in the danger inherent in his forays into the London underworld of homosexuality. Maybe it's just impossible to capture the true spirit of this most singular of men, but I just felt as if this film tried to cast Wilde as something of a victim led astray by all these pretty young boys and a man doomed by his own nature, and I don't completely buy into that.

I was also somewhat disappointed by the fact that Wilde's writing played only an incidental role in this story. We don't get a very good sense of the shocking nature of The Picture of Dorian Gray to Victorian society, apart from the comments of young Lord Alfred "Bosie" Douglas (Jude Law) upon his introduction to the author, and Wilde's successful plays provide little more than short moments in the sun for Wilde to receive the cheers of appreciative audiences on opening nights. There's basically no commentary on the relationship between Wilde's writing and his life.

I don't want to sound too negative, however, as I think this is a wonderful film. Stephen Fry makes for a wonderful, albeit subdued, Oscar Wilde, but Jude Law turns in a much more memorable performance as Bosie. With his flamboyant nature, sudden mood swings between devil-may-care flamboyance and taciturn childishness, and natural coquettishness, he dominates one scene after another. Wilde, in fact, becomes something of a pathetic creature at times, a helpless instrument in the hands of a young seducer whom he must suspect will ultimately lead to his downfall and disgrace. Certainly, there was little chance of keeping this extended dalliance a protected secret, but one cannot blame Bosie's father ' evil brute that he was ' from seeking Wilde's destruction. The irony, of course, is that Wilde engineered his own downfall, as it was his decision to sue the Marquess of Queensberry for libel (and to thereby perjure himself in court) that led to his arrest for gross indecency.

I certainly can't admire anything about Oscar Wilde's personal life beyond his brave determination to be nothing less than who he truly was, even when that meant facing two back-breaking years of manual labor in prison. I do admire his genius, however, and I don't think there's any doubt that his exploits influenced the society of his day and age. He helped define one era and ushered in the dawn of a new one. Most of all, he was just bloody fascinating. Any movie about his life would be noteworthy, and this one is certainly that.

I totally enjoyed this film and feel it is relivant information to better understand the impact Oscar Wilde had on the world. The largest factor was that Oscar was a well known and well liked member of the community prior to the scandal of the love that dare not speak its name. Even those who turned on him had a realization about the issue and it helped to awaken a new understanding. Oscar Wilde was in fact a bright and charming man that impressed and inspired. I feel this film shows him for who and what he was. It's a tribute for his life to be made into a modern play and this film was excellant.

For the most part, this is one of the most amazingly accurate biopics I have ever seen. The screenwriter obviously wrote it with Richard Ellman's stellar biography in one hand, and except for one small bit, stays astonishingly true to the facts of Wilde's life. The accuracy is one of the two things that makes this film so fascinating. The other is the remarkable performances by the films actors. Stephen Fry is nothing short of remarkable, acting Wilde as a real person, instead of a parody or caricature of Wilde. Jude Law, in one of his first notable screen performances, is appropriately fetching as Alfred Lord Douglas (and I do admire his courage as a heterosexual actor portraying so convincingly a homosexual siren). Tom Wilkinson, who each year seems to distinguish himself more and more as one of the most versatile and talented actors in film, is suitably vicious and tenacious as Lord Douglas's father, the Marquess of Queensbury. He strikes perfectly the pose of evangelical fervor and philistinism that one detects in reading of the real Marquess. Jennifer Ehle is excellent in the thankless role of Wilde's wife. The movie depicts quite accurately Wilde's intention in prison to return to his wife after leaving prison, an intention that was frustrated by her death before his release. His relationship with Robbie Ross, who was in real life probably Wilde's most faithful and dedicated friend, is shown in moving detail.

The lone complaint I have with the film is the omission of the past couple of years of Wilde's life. Although he was reunited with Alfred Lord Douglas briefly upon his release from prison, their attempted reconciliation was largely a failure, and they eventually went their own ways, with Lord Douglas completely turning his back on Wilde during his time of greatest need. The end of Wilde's life was heartbreakingly tragic, with Wilde often employing his considerable conversational skills in entertaining strangers for the cost of a few drinks. The contrast between the Oscar Wilde who had multiple plays running simultaneously in London in the 1890s and the Wilde who died nearly friendless and penniless in France in 1900 is as poignant as any in literary history. In 1895, he is the toast of London; in 1900, a pariah. But perhaps this alternative version of Wilde's life would have been too bleak. Even without the fuller ending, this is a very sad and tragic film. And WILDE proves that you can have a biopic that can, at the same time, maintain an exceedingly high degree of historical advocacy while remaining dramatically engrossing.

With a script taken from Richard Ellman's epic biography of Wilde (which was written with assistance from Merlin Holland, one of Wilde's grandsons), they couldn't go wrong. Brilliant casting decisions. Stephen Fry's long-time identification with Wilde and massive intillect gave him the ability to overcome being known only as a comedic actor (in *Jeeves & Wooster*, *Blackadder*, etc.) with a tour-de-force performance as Wilde. The wit is there, but so is the multi-faceted Wilde who loved his wife, adored his children, and fell prey to tragedy. Jennifer Ehle's Constance is brilliant, compassionate, and beautiful. Jude Law as Lord Alfred "Bosie" Douglas is nothing short of exquisite. The supporting cast (Zoë Wannamaker, Vanessa Redgrave, et al) round out the storytelling to a level worthy of the Oscar (pun vaguely intended).

The commentary and featurettes are quite well done -- of interest to fans and help to scholars. Writing my thesis on the influence of Wilde, PG Wodedhouse, and Evelyn Waugh on Fry's writing style (I encourage you to read Stephen Fry's novels), I can say for certain that the commentaries will find their way into the Citations section of my work.

All in all a good movie about our favorite infamous playwright. Many reviewers complain about the fact that the movie was more obviously about his sexuality than his writing; the fact that the movie is such is not surprising, as movie made about a man writing would be horribly dull.
With that said, the movie is quite excellent. For fans of Oscar, it is a magnificent rendition. For fans of the individual actors, it will be a quite titillating ride; many appear in odd Victorian clothes, or, alternately, without them.
Everything is rendered beautifully, down to perfect details such as the redone London streets and the green carnations that Oscar spread the good word of.
However, the movie is not for those easily swayed by human intolerance or depression, as it is not what people call a "happy movie". The tale of Oscar Wilde is a sad one, and this tells it with fairly close accuracy.
Parental Advisory: Most definitely not for children under the age of fifteen or so. The movie contains prevalent smoking, drinking, and sex. Scenes are not horrendously graphic, but are sufficiently erotic to disturb or tittillate younger audiences.