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Reviews
Shakespeare in Love (1998)
Shakespeare in love
The director John Madden has tried to link Shakespeare's life with the creation of his play "Romeo and Juliet".
Shakespeare, played by Joseph Fiennes, is a poor playwright who has lost his inspiration. While searching for a muse, he plans to write a comedy named "Romeo and Ethel the pirate's daughter". During the audition a young man catches Shakespeare's attention who is actually Lady Viola the Lesseps disguised as a man. She is fascinated by poetry and thus wants to be an actor. When Shakespeare calls upon her, she runs away. He finds out where she/he lives and asks for the young talent. At a dance he sneaks into the estate and meets Lady Violet. They fall in love with each other and she becomes his muse. Under her influence, he starts to write "Romeo and Juliet" and she plays the Romeo as Thomas Kent. The problem of the couple is that Shakespeare is married and that she is to be married to Lord Wessex who owns plantations in America. Eventually, Shakespeare finds out that Thomas Kent is Lady Violet. When the play is almost finished, the "rat-boy" sees that Thomas Kent is a woman and tells it the Guard. As women weren't allowed on the stage the theater is closed. Lady Violet has to marry Lord Wessex and on her wedding-day "Romeo and Juliet" is performed at concurrent's theater. She flees her husband to watch the play and has to play the Juliet. After the play Lord Wessex tells the audience that she is a women and wants to have everybody arrested but then Queen Elisabeth appears and as she is pleased by the play nobody is arrested at all. Now Lady Violet leaves for America but Shakespeare is still inspired by her. The movie got 7 Oscars and I think the actors' performance has earned that. Joseph Fiennes embodies a young and passionate Shakespeare and Gwyneth Paltrow expresses Lady Violet's love for poetry very vivid and believable. Madden has succeeded to combine biographical facts about Shakespeare with a mainstream-suitable love story and one of the Bard's most famous plays. Even people who are not very interested in Shakespeare or his plays could like this film. It is a Hollywood-adaption of Shakespeare's life. Not very near to the facts but quite amusing.
The Tempest (1998)
The Tempest
Jack Bender's "The Tempest" is an adaption of Shakespeare's play "The Tempest". Bender transports the plot from medieval Italy to Mississippi during the time of the American civil war. He includes the slavery problem and the role of revenge in wartimes.
Prospero, re-named Gideon Prosper is not the Duke of Milan but a landowner in Mississippi. He learns voodoo magic from the female slave Mambo Azaleigh. He saves her son Ariel, who thus accompanies him into his exile. The island is not situated on the sea but in a swamp near the banks of the Mississippi. There lives an Alligator hunter, a so-called "Gator-Man", who later tries to rape Prospero's daughter Miranda. During the time of the civil war, Ariel wants to join the Union troops to help fighting against slavery. Prospero does not care about the war. He is only interested in his personal revenge on his brother Antony. When Antony and his bookkeeper Willi Gonzo (Gonzalo) try to cross the river, Prospero raises a storm. The Union soldier Frederick gets lost in the swamp and finally comes to the island. He and Miranda fall in love with each other but Prospero won't accept that. Meanwhile, Ariel transformed into a raven by Prospero, finds out that Antony has feigned to ally with the Union but plans to betray them. Antony and Gonzo meet Gator Man in the swamp and conspire with him against Prospero. They kidnap Miranda and Ariel but Prospero freeze them and helps the Union defeat the Southern army. In the end Ariel is free, Frederick and Miranda are bound to marry, Prospero returns to the plantation and Gator Man gets back the island.
Peter Fonda represents Gideon Prosper powerfully and convincingly while the character of Antony stays rather flat. It was no bad idea to perform the Tempest before the background of the civil war but perhaps the director has risked too much. In some parts the story seems constructed or comical. Gator Man for example does just appear without any explanation. That it needs a kidnapping to bring Prospero to his mind and that he loses confidence in his power shows that Bender tried to make Prospero more human but only made him a weak old man without his magic. Prospero's original authority and wisdom is not made clear.
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