The Happy Prince (Film Review)
May. 25th, 2018 04:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakOn Wednesday, The Happy Prince, a film covering Oscar Wilde‘s final post-prison years, directed and written by as well as starring Rupert Everett premiered in Munich. It has already been shown at the Berlin Film Festival, but I think not yet in Britain, let alone the US. This is most because of the way it was funded, with the Bavarian film fund providing near half of the cash. Quoth Rupert Everett in the Q & A preceding the movie: „My film I felt was a really European film. It takes place in three languages, it‘s about a character travelling all over Europe, and it was financed in Europe. And then Brexit happened.“ He‘s currently filming a tv version ofThe Name of the Rose in Italy. „I‘m still living my European dream until I‘m sent back to London without a visa. Maybe I should find a nice German boy to marry?“ (A lot of people of both genders in the audience cheered at that, Everett‘s current medieval monk looks not withstanding.
Because of all the Bavarian money, a lot of the movie was filmed in my home province of Franconia, which gets to double for France again (as in the most recent Musketeers), and for Naples as well. This cracks me up, because it‘s really like neither - but I have to say the film disguised it very artfully. Everett said Franconia reminded him of Yorkshire. „So it was really Oscar Wilde, living in Bayreuth.“
Instantly, my mind went to the AU where Oscar goes to Germany instead of Belgium, Italy and France post prison, because fandom has wired me to consider possible AUs like that. And I thought, you know, it might have actually worked out. His plays were incredibly popular. And the late 1890s were when Max Reinhardt became King of the German language stages, and pioneered the work of George Bernard Shaw (translated by Siegfried Trebitsch), to the point where several of Shaw‘s plays premiered on German stages before they were shown in English. I could see Reinhardt championing the other Irish playwright as well. (Also, there‘s the Max Reinhardt-Richard Strauss connection. Since Strauss turned Salome into an opera, why not other Wildean works?) Of course, none of that would have solved some quintessential problems, including Wilde‘s inability to write anything after „The Ballad of Reading Goal“ and linguistic isolation which comes with exile. Not to mention that while I doubt the big scandal would have had quite the same effect in Germany and Austria (too far away, and potentially politically dicy, since some of Wilhelm II‘s buddies were rumored to be gay, probably correctly so), it might not have gotten handwaved, either. But still. Who knows what would have happened?
On to what actually happens in The Happy Prince. The movie isn‘t entirely chronological, starting about a week or two before Oscar Wilde‘s death and having the present day action, with a second timeline covering the years between his prison release and his current day outcast existence in Paris, and in between there‘s the occasional flashback-within-flashback to the glory years and to his time in prison. It sounds more complicated than it feels. Asked why he picked the post-prison time to focus on, Everett said both because that‘s where the previous movies about Wilde stopped, and because „I felt that society and culture was still too embarassed to confront what it did to Oscar Wilde. He had a prison sentence, and then a different sentence in liberty.“ Sure enough, within the first few minutes we see that scene which comes up in various biographies where Oscar is recognised by a (female) acquaintance of yesteryear in Paris, he with irony and grace but determination asks her for money (which he gets), and her husband drags her away with a sneer and rant in Wilde‘s direction. Flashback to Wilde‘s witty premiere speech when „The Importance of being Earnest“ debuted, to thunderous applause. Meanwhile, present day Oscar has to palm off his landlord by promising Robbie Ross will pay the rent when he comes, but then goes to a Parisian tavern and actually enjoys himself until reality ensues once more.
This is approximately how the film works - both the wit and the suffering of our hero get ample display (in both cases it feels justified). Everett cut down Wilde‘s social circle (which even in exile was comparatively large) and thus the ensemble for the film down to Robbie Ross and Reggie Taylor on the one hand and Oscar‘s homme fatale, Bosie Douglas, on the other, and adds two ocs, two French boys, one of whom is ca. 17-ish teenager and part-time prostitute whom Oscar has sex with now and then, and the other is an actual kid who gets treated to Wildean stories (including The Happy Prince from the title) instead. This limitation of characters works to the film‘s advantage as it means you get characterisation depth for all of them. (Well, okay, Colin Firth‘s Reggie Taylor mostly functions as a sardonic chorus of sorts, who likes Oscar but isn‘t blind to the way he can take people over, and thus keeps a sane emotionnal distance.)
As in every biography I‘ve read, Robbie Ross is the undisputed hero of Wilde‘s life, devoted, kind, and despite clearly loving Oscar above and beyond not doing so blindly, which is why, for example, he can understand Constance (OW‘s wife) and the fact she keeps her distance post prison instead of, as Wilde at first expects her to, taking Oscar back. Unfortunately for Robbie Ross, though, he‘s not the one Oscar is in love with. „Why can‘t I be enough for you?“ he asks frustratedly at one point, and yes, that would have been another story altogether, with no prison sentence, since Robbie never would have insisted Oscar should take his father to court.
To this question, Oscar replies with a wittier version of „because you‘re too nice“. Which brings us to the one who most definitely is not: Lord Alfred Douglas, aka Bosie. Because Bosie mostly comes across as a dreadful character in all stages of his life - about the most sympathetic thing about him is that his father was terrible and abusive -, it‘s in any version of the Wilde tale important he‘s played by someone both beautiful and charismatic so the audience understands not only what the fuss was about but why Oscar doesn‘t call it quits. The post-prison Oscar/Bosie relationship being a high speed rerun of their pre-prison relationship. In Stephen Fry‘s Wilde, Bosie was played by Jude Law in his breakout role as a young actor, and I used to think no other actor could pull off quite this mixture between appalling egomaniac (and not in the way the audience is supposed to forgive) and seductive heartbreaker, but here, Colin „Merlin“ Morgan does it as well. Now I‘ve seen Colin Morgan solely in either heroic or at least sympathetic roles so far, and he was reliably excellent in them all; Bosie is completely unlike those other roles, and he‘s superb there as well. (Also dashing as a blond, which I hadn‘t expected; few natural dark haired people are, and not a few natural blondes look better with black hair, see also Lucy Lawless, Natalie Dormer.) When he enters the film, you really do believe that Oscar Wilde, despite having written De Profundis which is among many other things one of the most devastating „The reason you suck“ speeches in literary history about this very man and having ruined his life over him once already just can‘t do other than take him back.
It also helps that Everett‘s script, once the ecstatic reunion gives way to arguments again, presents Bosie as the „the jerk has a point“ kind of antagonist. Oscar is a snob (or was, when still successful), and Bosie being nobility added to the appeal; Robbie is jealous (but then so is Bosie); Oscar is lying when pretending to write again (in fact, selling an unwritten play to three different people, with the awareness that he‘ll never write it), etc. (Possibly because Colin Morgan comes across as naturally intelligent, this makes movie Bosie look smarter and more insightful than real life Alfred Douglas, but it works within the story.) And then there‘s the fact that post-prison, Bosie didn‘t have to gain anything from returning to Oscar in the first place, so within whatever amount of affection he‘s capable of, he probably does care. Just not enough.
General looks observations: having encountered Rupert Everett in the flesh, I can say he‘s making himself look worse (justifiably so) as Wilde in all stages we see our hero in except for the flashback to Oscar and his sons; the decay is depicted, though at no point so cruel as the Toulouse-Lautrec portrait of Oscar Wilde presents him. Edwin Thomas looks a bit more handsome than I recall Robbie Ross looking from the portraits. Colin Firth with Reggie Turner‘s gigantic mustache is nearly unrecognizable. In the Franconia-as-Naples gay party scene, I couldn‘t help but notice, approvingly, that the men depicted in various stages of nudity had all realistic bodies, i.e. they didn‘t look as if all of them were hitting the gyms regularly, no matter whether they were more on the slim or more on the heavy side. I mention this because in Christopher and his kind, the Matt Smith starring tv film about Christopher Isherwood, you could get the impression tout Berlin solely consisted of muscular, well trained male bodies. When there was a devasting depression going on, lots of unemployment, and even German moviestars in the early 30s did not look like that. Well, the various boys and fishermen in Naples (read: Franconia) look like people you could actually encounter on a street, and who have a job that doesn‘t allow them to exercise for maximum looks.
For obvious reasons, there aren‘t many female characters in the movie. Emily Blunt makes her three scenes as Constance Wilde (before her death) count, and the actress playing Mrs. Arbuthnot, the Wilde fan with the awful husband, has only the one scene but conveys the mixture of sadness, compassion and embarassment really well. The two French street boys are ably played as well, with a cheerful matter-of-factness; they don‘t feel sorry for Oscar, which is one reason why he likes them.
Let‘s see, what else: unfortunately, the scenes featuring homophobia (other than by the jerkish husband) and bullying (two notable ones, one a sequence where the 1890s equivalent of frat boys recognizes Oscar in Dieppe and decides to have a go, and one a flashback to when he was being transported from one prison to another and had to spent half an hour at Clapham Junction where he was recognized, taunted and spat at) come across as clumsily stylized, feeling a lot like 1980s tv for some reason. In great contrast to the rest of the film, and I don‘t just mean the quiet, funny or touching scenes, but also the arguments. The emotional violence in the final Bosie-Oscar-Robbie argument is devastating. The Dieppe bullies pursuing Oscar with taunts through the streets until he finally loses it and shouts at them, otoh, is a sequence that feels - well, staged, for lack of a better term. It‘s not that I doubt that homophobic bullies, Victorian or otherwise, behave like this. But I suspect this is where a more experienced director could have helped.
Lastly, about the title: The Happy Prince is a thematic red thread through the movie - we see Oscar tell bits and pieces of the story at different points to the two French boys and to his sons - , and in the end, the film isn‘t subtle about just who fulfills which role. (Oscar is the prince, and Robbie the faithful swallow.) Other Wilde works cited and alluded: mainly and not surprisingly The Ballad of Reading Goal, De Profundis, Salome and The Importance of Being Earnest. The various Wildean witty aphorisms are interwoven seamlessly into the dialogue, including both „I‘m dying above my means“ and „Either this wallpaper goes, or I go“. But the one Everett in the Q & A called his favourite Wilde quote I didn‘t hear, unless I temporarily had a blackout, to wit: „We‘re all living in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.“ „This,“ said Rupert Everett, „just about sums him up in my film“, and so it does.
Because of all the Bavarian money, a lot of the movie was filmed in my home province of Franconia, which gets to double for France again (as in the most recent Musketeers), and for Naples as well. This cracks me up, because it‘s really like neither - but I have to say the film disguised it very artfully. Everett said Franconia reminded him of Yorkshire. „So it was really Oscar Wilde, living in Bayreuth.“
Instantly, my mind went to the AU where Oscar goes to Germany instead of Belgium, Italy and France post prison, because fandom has wired me to consider possible AUs like that. And I thought, you know, it might have actually worked out. His plays were incredibly popular. And the late 1890s were when Max Reinhardt became King of the German language stages, and pioneered the work of George Bernard Shaw (translated by Siegfried Trebitsch), to the point where several of Shaw‘s plays premiered on German stages before they were shown in English. I could see Reinhardt championing the other Irish playwright as well. (Also, there‘s the Max Reinhardt-Richard Strauss connection. Since Strauss turned Salome into an opera, why not other Wildean works?) Of course, none of that would have solved some quintessential problems, including Wilde‘s inability to write anything after „The Ballad of Reading Goal“ and linguistic isolation which comes with exile. Not to mention that while I doubt the big scandal would have had quite the same effect in Germany and Austria (too far away, and potentially politically dicy, since some of Wilhelm II‘s buddies were rumored to be gay, probably correctly so), it might not have gotten handwaved, either. But still. Who knows what would have happened?
On to what actually happens in The Happy Prince. The movie isn‘t entirely chronological, starting about a week or two before Oscar Wilde‘s death and having the present day action, with a second timeline covering the years between his prison release and his current day outcast existence in Paris, and in between there‘s the occasional flashback-within-flashback to the glory years and to his time in prison. It sounds more complicated than it feels. Asked why he picked the post-prison time to focus on, Everett said both because that‘s where the previous movies about Wilde stopped, and because „I felt that society and culture was still too embarassed to confront what it did to Oscar Wilde. He had a prison sentence, and then a different sentence in liberty.“ Sure enough, within the first few minutes we see that scene which comes up in various biographies where Oscar is recognised by a (female) acquaintance of yesteryear in Paris, he with irony and grace but determination asks her for money (which he gets), and her husband drags her away with a sneer and rant in Wilde‘s direction. Flashback to Wilde‘s witty premiere speech when „The Importance of being Earnest“ debuted, to thunderous applause. Meanwhile, present day Oscar has to palm off his landlord by promising Robbie Ross will pay the rent when he comes, but then goes to a Parisian tavern and actually enjoys himself until reality ensues once more.
This is approximately how the film works - both the wit and the suffering of our hero get ample display (in both cases it feels justified). Everett cut down Wilde‘s social circle (which even in exile was comparatively large) and thus the ensemble for the film down to Robbie Ross and Reggie Taylor on the one hand and Oscar‘s homme fatale, Bosie Douglas, on the other, and adds two ocs, two French boys, one of whom is ca. 17-ish teenager and part-time prostitute whom Oscar has sex with now and then, and the other is an actual kid who gets treated to Wildean stories (including The Happy Prince from the title) instead. This limitation of characters works to the film‘s advantage as it means you get characterisation depth for all of them. (Well, okay, Colin Firth‘s Reggie Taylor mostly functions as a sardonic chorus of sorts, who likes Oscar but isn‘t blind to the way he can take people over, and thus keeps a sane emotionnal distance.)
As in every biography I‘ve read, Robbie Ross is the undisputed hero of Wilde‘s life, devoted, kind, and despite clearly loving Oscar above and beyond not doing so blindly, which is why, for example, he can understand Constance (OW‘s wife) and the fact she keeps her distance post prison instead of, as Wilde at first expects her to, taking Oscar back. Unfortunately for Robbie Ross, though, he‘s not the one Oscar is in love with. „Why can‘t I be enough for you?“ he asks frustratedly at one point, and yes, that would have been another story altogether, with no prison sentence, since Robbie never would have insisted Oscar should take his father to court.
To this question, Oscar replies with a wittier version of „because you‘re too nice“. Which brings us to the one who most definitely is not: Lord Alfred Douglas, aka Bosie. Because Bosie mostly comes across as a dreadful character in all stages of his life - about the most sympathetic thing about him is that his father was terrible and abusive -, it‘s in any version of the Wilde tale important he‘s played by someone both beautiful and charismatic so the audience understands not only what the fuss was about but why Oscar doesn‘t call it quits. The post-prison Oscar/Bosie relationship being a high speed rerun of their pre-prison relationship. In Stephen Fry‘s Wilde, Bosie was played by Jude Law in his breakout role as a young actor, and I used to think no other actor could pull off quite this mixture between appalling egomaniac (and not in the way the audience is supposed to forgive) and seductive heartbreaker, but here, Colin „Merlin“ Morgan does it as well. Now I‘ve seen Colin Morgan solely in either heroic or at least sympathetic roles so far, and he was reliably excellent in them all; Bosie is completely unlike those other roles, and he‘s superb there as well. (Also dashing as a blond, which I hadn‘t expected; few natural dark haired people are, and not a few natural blondes look better with black hair, see also Lucy Lawless, Natalie Dormer.) When he enters the film, you really do believe that Oscar Wilde, despite having written De Profundis which is among many other things one of the most devastating „The reason you suck“ speeches in literary history about this very man and having ruined his life over him once already just can‘t do other than take him back.
It also helps that Everett‘s script, once the ecstatic reunion gives way to arguments again, presents Bosie as the „the jerk has a point“ kind of antagonist. Oscar is a snob (or was, when still successful), and Bosie being nobility added to the appeal; Robbie is jealous (but then so is Bosie); Oscar is lying when pretending to write again (in fact, selling an unwritten play to three different people, with the awareness that he‘ll never write it), etc. (Possibly because Colin Morgan comes across as naturally intelligent, this makes movie Bosie look smarter and more insightful than real life Alfred Douglas, but it works within the story.) And then there‘s the fact that post-prison, Bosie didn‘t have to gain anything from returning to Oscar in the first place, so within whatever amount of affection he‘s capable of, he probably does care. Just not enough.
General looks observations: having encountered Rupert Everett in the flesh, I can say he‘s making himself look worse (justifiably so) as Wilde in all stages we see our hero in except for the flashback to Oscar and his sons; the decay is depicted, though at no point so cruel as the Toulouse-Lautrec portrait of Oscar Wilde presents him. Edwin Thomas looks a bit more handsome than I recall Robbie Ross looking from the portraits. Colin Firth with Reggie Turner‘s gigantic mustache is nearly unrecognizable. In the Franconia-as-Naples gay party scene, I couldn‘t help but notice, approvingly, that the men depicted in various stages of nudity had all realistic bodies, i.e. they didn‘t look as if all of them were hitting the gyms regularly, no matter whether they were more on the slim or more on the heavy side. I mention this because in Christopher and his kind, the Matt Smith starring tv film about Christopher Isherwood, you could get the impression tout Berlin solely consisted of muscular, well trained male bodies. When there was a devasting depression going on, lots of unemployment, and even German moviestars in the early 30s did not look like that. Well, the various boys and fishermen in Naples (read: Franconia) look like people you could actually encounter on a street, and who have a job that doesn‘t allow them to exercise for maximum looks.
For obvious reasons, there aren‘t many female characters in the movie. Emily Blunt makes her three scenes as Constance Wilde (before her death) count, and the actress playing Mrs. Arbuthnot, the Wilde fan with the awful husband, has only the one scene but conveys the mixture of sadness, compassion and embarassment really well. The two French street boys are ably played as well, with a cheerful matter-of-factness; they don‘t feel sorry for Oscar, which is one reason why he likes them.
Let‘s see, what else: unfortunately, the scenes featuring homophobia (other than by the jerkish husband) and bullying (two notable ones, one a sequence where the 1890s equivalent of frat boys recognizes Oscar in Dieppe and decides to have a go, and one a flashback to when he was being transported from one prison to another and had to spent half an hour at Clapham Junction where he was recognized, taunted and spat at) come across as clumsily stylized, feeling a lot like 1980s tv for some reason. In great contrast to the rest of the film, and I don‘t just mean the quiet, funny or touching scenes, but also the arguments. The emotional violence in the final Bosie-Oscar-Robbie argument is devastating. The Dieppe bullies pursuing Oscar with taunts through the streets until he finally loses it and shouts at them, otoh, is a sequence that feels - well, staged, for lack of a better term. It‘s not that I doubt that homophobic bullies, Victorian or otherwise, behave like this. But I suspect this is where a more experienced director could have helped.
Lastly, about the title: The Happy Prince is a thematic red thread through the movie - we see Oscar tell bits and pieces of the story at different points to the two French boys and to his sons - , and in the end, the film isn‘t subtle about just who fulfills which role. (Oscar is the prince, and Robbie the faithful swallow.) Other Wilde works cited and alluded: mainly and not surprisingly The Ballad of Reading Goal, De Profundis, Salome and The Importance of Being Earnest. The various Wildean witty aphorisms are interwoven seamlessly into the dialogue, including both „I‘m dying above my means“ and „Either this wallpaper goes, or I go“. But the one Everett in the Q & A called his favourite Wilde quote I didn‘t hear, unless I temporarily had a blackout, to wit: „We‘re all living in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.“ „This,“ said Rupert Everett, „just about sums him up in my film“, and so it does.
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Date: 2018-05-25 03:42 pm (UTC)Hopefully, I'll get to see this one.
no subject
Date: 2018-05-26 02:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-05-26 05:56 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-05-26 02:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-05-27 07:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-05-27 01:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-06-23 04:19 am (UTC)