Hey folks, Harry here... I'm actually, very much, looking forward to this film. For one, it's been a while since seeing Billy Crudup in a really great role, having said that this is a review that didn't care for this film, but acknowledges that he was in the minority with that feeling. And even experienced people declaring the film, the best they'd seen this year. Well, watch out for spoilers, and remember... there will be many positive looks at this same film, if what he says is accurate. Here ya go....
Hey Harry,
I just got back from one of the very first US screenings of STAGE BEAUTY, which most of the audience with whom I watched it really enjoyed. In an organized group discussion held in the theater afterwards, one person said that it was one of the best films of the year, and that it was much better than SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE. Many agreed. Meanwhile, I bit my tongue and began writing this review in my head.
STAGE BEAUTY is certainly not one of the best films of the year. It’s also not the sort of film that is going to be an Oscar contender in any major category. Furthermore, in no shape, form or fashion is it better than SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE, and I say that despite the fact that I felt quite indifferent to that film’s unexpected Best Picture win. The comparison of those two films is inevitable (even though the filmmakers don’t want you to think so), given the similar conceit, setting and even the sharing of two supporting performers (Tom Wilkinson and Rupert Everett).
As STAGE BEAUTY begins, it seems to try to emulate (with little success) much of the wit Tom Stoppard infused SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE with. Star actor Ned Kynaston (Billy Crudup) is performing against-sex (per the English law at the time that women could not perform as actors on stage) as Desdemona in the death scene of “Othello” and in fact gets a standing ovation for the murder scene… before the play even ends. Backstage, he argues with the manager Betterton (Tom Wilkinson, who was given much more to do with a much smaller role in SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE) over contract renegotiations, which I suppose is meant to show us the parallels between the theatre back then and the Hollywood scene now. Does that comparison sound familiar? Yeah, it’s been done and better… in SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE.
The film has an excruciatingly long first act that takes place over the course of one night (the fact that the film is based on a play is probably the best explanation for some of the extremely long set pieces of the first half of the film). We also meet Maria (Claire Danes), who after working as a costume girl for Kynaston and mouthing each line he speaks as she watches from offstage, runs off with some props and costume to scandalously perform as Desdemona in a low-scale tavern production of “Othello.” Her performance leads the way, eventually, to King Charles II (Rupert Everett, hamming it up) revoking the law that women cannot perform onstage and eventually even going so far as to outlaw men from performing as women onstage after his mistress catches Kynaston having a hissy fit onstage with Betterton about how he’ll quit if Betterton casts any women in the show.
Thus we progress through the second act, which for the most part is a melodramatic Restoration-era version of ALL ABOUT EVE. Of course, none of the characters are as sharply drawn, none of the dialogue is as deliciously biting, and none of the reveals are nearly as finely tuned as they are in Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s 1950 masterpiece. There’s a certain point in STAGE BEAUTY, around the time that Maria is being forced to show a tit for a painter in order to sell tickets for the show, that I realized that I could not identify or sympathize with any of the characters in the film at that moment. Sure, it was around a time when many of these characters are supposed to hit their low point, but I never liked the characters enough to find these pitfalls to be the least bit tragic or profound.
Furthermore, I was uncomfortable with the way that the film seemed to make some effort to revert the metrosexual movement made ubiquitous by shows like “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy” which do a lot to shake up the traditional idea of gender roles and induce a healthy level of androgyny into the average person’s lifestyle. Kynaston is a bi-sexual character, fooling around with woman although he seems to have a more of an emotional connection to the Duke of Buckingham (Ben Chaplin). Eventually after Kynaston is no longer able to perform in drag, the Duke shuns him, saying he was only really interested in him for the illusion of making love to the female characters that Kynaston was playing.
By the end of the film, though, Kynaston finds romance with Maria and they both perform “Othello” with Kynaston as Othello and Maria as Desdemona, the way this film seems to imply that it should be. A man should act like a man, and a woman should act like a woman. Of course, this is apparently based on a true story, and the real Kynaston eventually did have a wife and children. However, the way in which the film sets the Kynaston character up, from being trained through very rigid and questionable techniques in his youth to emulate women as an actor to his dispassionate encounters with women, does not make it particularly believable when out of nowhere, the film throws aside the Kynaston/Maria feud with an out-of-left-field make-out session leading into the bumpy third act of the film.
The often silly humor in this film (such as when Kynaston is showing Maria how gay men have sex, which of course, leads into their aforementioned make-out session) conflicts with the uncomfortable and often unearned melodrama, leading to a great deal of false tension when it seems like Kynaston may have actually murdered Maria as they perform “Othello’s” climactic final scene. Of course he didn’t kill her. It would have been completely out of character for this film. Instead, Maria gets the mid-performances standing ovation and she and Kynaston run off backstage to share a passionate kiss.
Maybe it had just been a while since anyone in today’s audience had seen SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE, and maybe they were still a little bitter that it beat SAVING PRIVATE RYAN for Best Picture when it probably shouldn’t have. But I am still left scratching my head and trying to figure out why some people will embrace an uneven film like this which obviously did not make a smooth transition from its stagebound origin as some kind of masterpiece. STAGE BEAUTY is a flawed, forgettable film with okay performances. There’s nothing else to say about it.
This is The Keen Guy, who still hasn’t sent you a positive film review. But I do actually like films quite frequently!
