Oscar Bate: Shakespeare In Love and Elizabeth (1998)

Shakespeare In Love Deserves More Love and Elizabeth Steals the Crown

Shakespeare In Love is a brilliant comedy. There, I said (or rather, wrote) it. Prove me wrong! No wait: don’t bother trying. You’ll fail.

A clever comedy that manages to be about the creative processes (as well as the market-related and business pressures) of writing, acting in and putting on a show, the movie also employs gender swapping, not only to great comedic effect but also to express (if not quite explore) feminist themes. Its liberal use of Shakespeare’s actual writings as passages of dialogue and to execute in-jokes is at a level of sophistication that most mainstream U.S. movies these days don’t even bother to strive for. Most importantly, the movie emphasizes love as the driving force for the main characters and reminds us in bittersweet fashion that while love does not, unfortunately, always conquer all, it is one of life’s great muses and does live on, even after it ends.

Of the movies released in 1998, Shakespeare In Love was the 18th highest grosser. 1998 was crowded with box office hits that outgrossed Shakespeare In Love, and that run the gamut from thought-provoking dramas (Saving Private Ryan, The Truman Show), disaster spectacles (Armageddon, Deep Impact, Godzilla), raunchy comedies (There’s Something About Mary, The Waterboy) and feel-good family fare (A Bug’s Life, Patch Adams, the Rugrats Movie).

If a movie in the 1990s surpassed the $100M mark, it was considered a certified blockbuster. (This changed with Titanic, due to its stratospheric production costs, but that’s another story). Shakespeare was the lowest grossing blockbuster released in 1998 to cross that threshold, raking in a little over $103M (a significant portion of this revenue occurred after its Best Picture win in 1999).

Conventional wisdom these days holds that Shakespeare In Love is a fluffy trifle that did not deserve its Best Picture Oscar, that Gwyneth Paltrow is also a fluffy trifle who did not deserve her Best Actress Oscar, and that the movie beating out Saving Private Ryan for Best Picture is nothing less than a scandalous travesty, the blame for which can be laid squarely at the feet of Hollywood monster Harvey Weinstein (Shakespeare’s producer at Miramax), whose ruthless Oscar campaign leading up to the awards ceremony was unprecedented.

And all I can say to the straight, white Hollywood men and their legions of film school graduate fanboys who get erections at any mention of The Godfather (Parts I & II) but hate on Shakespeare In Love is: you need to bring it down a notch, ladies. God forbid a movie that isn’t centered on male protagonists, war or gangsters win a prize once in a great while.

As of this writing there have been 96 Best Picture Oscar winners. Of those winners, I would categorize only 8 of them (including Shakespeare In Love) as comedies: the other 7 are All About Eve, It Happened One Night, Annie Hall, You Can’t Take It With You, The Apartment, Parasite and Tom Jones. There are other winners that are hybrid comedies but primarily of another genre, such as musical-comedies (Gigi, Going My Way) and dramas with comedic elements (Terms of Endearment, Driving Miss Daisy). Doing the math will show you that comedies account for a whopping 8% of all Best Picture winners.

A cursory glance at IMDB’s list of the top 250 movies contains 22 titles (about 9%) that center on female protagonists. My reason for drawing attention to these 2 statistics is to show that the narrative that defines U.S. movie history, as well as discussions about movies, is dominated by heterosexual men of a certain color and favors movies that are, for the most part, made by and for them. And yet, there are just over 2.5M more women in this country than there are men. So there’s always been a strange disconnect in Hollywood when it comes to telling stories from and about the female perspective, and a tendency to undervalue the stories that do manage to get told (most recent case in point: The Barbie Movie).

IMHO, Shakespeare In Love’s reputation suffers as the result of a few things: our collective revulsion for Harvey Weinstein, our collective irritation with Gwyneth Paltrow and the men who are still butt hurt that a spectacularly filmed movie that showed men blowing each other to smithereens on the beaches at Normandy didn’t win Best Picture that year.

And I get it, I really do. Saving Private Ryan is a riveting war movie that depicts a pivotal moment in our country’s history. But sometimes, the “best Picture” about men doesn’t actually win. It’s almost as if meritocracy isn’t always a thing! Having said that, if it had been up to me, Best Actress would have gone to Cate Blanchett for her brilliant portrayal of the title character in Elizabeth. Blanchett carries a movie that is filled to bursting with male characters pushing their own agendas and jockeying for position, at court and for Elizabeth’s favor. By movie’s end they have either come through for her or met their fate for having tried to do her in. And having said that, Gwyneth’s Oscar is nonetheless well-deserved: her English accent is flawless (as far as my Southern CA raised ears can tell), she emotes wonderfully when necessary and her comic timing is on point. As for Best Picture, I was solidly in Shakespeare’s corner.

Elizabeth’s tone is quite different than that of Shakespeare In Love: its dark portrayal of palace intrigue and the power struggle Queen Elizabeth faces as a young woman who becomes monarch creates a palpable atmosphere of dread and suspense. While well-regarded and often cited as being of much higher quality than Shakespeare In Love, Elizabeth was the 64th highest grossing movie of 1998, coming in at just over $30M in the U.S. Elizabeth’s tone may have limited its box office appeal to U.S. audiences at the time, or maybe it just didn’t enjoy the same kind of marketing push and distribution that Shakespeare In Love did, but it’s an excellent movie and if you haven’t seen it, I strongly suggest that you do.

I’ve already sung the praises of Shakespeare In Love. Yes, Harvey Weinstein produced it. But his fingerprints are all over a lot of movies (about 331, to be exact), many of which are to this day well-regarded or considered classics: Pulp Fiction, The Lord of the Rings trilogy, Kill Bill Vols. I & II, Scream I-IV, and many, many others. I am in no way an apologist for Weinstein; he’s vile, he got what he had coming to him and he’s where he needs to be. But his involvement doesn’t change the quality of Shakespeare In Love or any of the other great movies that he had a hand in producing.

As for Gwyneth, well, she kind of did what most successful actors these days do: she branched out. If you take a look at her post Oscar win filmography, you can see that her acting options turned out to be, well…somewhat limited. There are what you may consider (depending on your taste) some quality titles in there (The Talented Mr. Ripley, The Royal Tannenbaums, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, Iron Man and some other Marvel titles), but overall they’re pretty forgettable (Shallow Hal was not the slam dunk some people apparently thought it was going to be and Bounce is best left unmentioned). The days of her shelf life as a leading lady were numbered, and I give her credit for being sharp enough to read the writing on the wall, and savvy enough to pivot. She was shrewd to get involved in that kooky business that sells strange products to rich ladies, even if the products that business sells often seem somewhat questionable and ridiculous. But Gwyneth knows her client base, and if she markets products to them that they’ll purchase, then she shouldn’t be put down for that. From what I know (and that ain’t much) her business is, for the most part, a successful one.

Gwyneth was also a major source for the New York Times article that outed Weinstein as a sexual predator and helped start the #MeToo movement, so we can add that to the plus column of the Gwyneth Paltrow ledger, no matter how annoying she may have turned out to be to some people.

Before I sign off, I have an admission to make: Shakespeare In Love does enjoy a 92% Tomatometer score, along with an 80% audience score, on Rotten Tomatoes. So I know I’m not alone in singing its praises. But the only time I ever see it mentioned nowadays is when it’s being dismissed and complained about, so I just wanted to show it some love. And while Elizabeth’s box office performance paled in comparison to Shakespeare In Love, its 83% Tomatometer score and 86% Audience Score show that its critical and audience receptions are on par with Shakespeare In Love. If you’re ever in the mood for an Elizabethan era double feature, I highly recommend you settle in and watch Shakespeare In Love with Elizabeth. They’ll each scratch a different side of the same itch, but it’s a pairing that I promise will do you no wrong.

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