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THE
IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST
2/10
UK/USA
2002 : Oliver Parker : 98 mins
ONE-LINE
REVIEW: The big-name actors do their best, but it’s still hard to imagine
a more unfunny or misconceived adaptation of Wilde’s classic than this
inept bastardisation.
After
An Ideal Husband (2000) - an Oscar Wilde adaptation with Rupert
Everett prominent in a star-laden cast - director Parker outdoes even
Frank Darabont by following
up with The Importance of Being Earnest – an Oscar Wilde adaptation
with Rupert Everett prominent in a star-laden cast. Parker shows similar
levels of ambition and imagination in his execution of Earnest as
he did in his choice of material – i.e. zero. And it really is an ‘execution’
– you’d be forgiven for thinking that Parker hated Wilde in general and
this play in particular.
He
certainly isn’t awed by Earnest’s exalted status as a modern classic
of British comic theatre, if his countless idiotic amendments, additions
and deletions are anything to go by. If you’re going to muck about with
it, you can’t go half measures – any revisions must come from a solid
creative rationale. This is singularly lacking from Parker’s approach:
his arbitrary attempts at ‘opening out’ the material are little short
of disastrous. The first warning signs come very early on indeed – he
even makes a dog’s breakfast of the opening titles. Scene after scene
falls flat, with only the odd line here and there raising a chuckle. We
sit for long stretches stony-faced as we watch these talented actors stranded
in the wilderness of Parker’s imagination.
He’d
doubtless claim that he’s presenting this 1890s work for a 2002 audience
– and also that he’s deliberately trying to distance himself from Anthony
Asquith’s 1951 film version as much as possible. These are, on paper,
sensible aims. But it’s probably not possible to fulfil them both and
also retain fidelity to Wilde’s spirit and substance. The Asquith film
was little more than a filmed record of the play, with no concessions
to the cinematic medium – but this isn’t a problem when you have a cast
as definitive as Asquith’s, each of them expert performers entirely in
tune with Wilde’s brand of sweet-but-savage satire.
This
play is an intricate, ornate, delicate creation. Any synopsis of its ‘plot’
will sound absurd – it’s a mark of Wilde’s genius that, in a successful
production, the absurdities become all part of the fun. Here, we have
ample time to ponder the distracting implausibilities that mount up when
ne’er-do-well London fops Jack (Colin Firth) and Algy (Everett) repair
to Jack’s country manor for a weekend of wooing. But their intended targets
– society heiress Gwendolen (Frances O’Connor) and Jack’s young ward Cecily
(Reese Witherspoon) – cause complications when both insist they could
only possibly marry men named Ernest. Hilarious confusions ensue.
Or
rather, they would be hilarious, if Parker had any sense of comic timing.
Alas, he has none and we are treated instead to more of his stodgy, old-school
direction. He inserts some over-literal flashbacks, and startlingly awkward
visualisations Cecily’s knights-on-horseback fantasies. It doesn’t help
that both interior and exterior scenes are conspicuously underlit, as
if the whole thing was taking place on an especially dingy winter afternoon,
nor that Charlie Mole’s score, sounds like the muzak from a z-grade 1970s
saucy comedy.
It
all adds up to a ponderous kind of semi-drama in which the talented actors
like Judi Dench, Tom Wilkinson and Edward Fox are painfully stranded.
Firth comes across especially badly, and Everett doesn’t fare much better
in a role for which he should be ideally suited. As Cecily’s tutor Miss
Prism, Anna Massey does have one remarkable moment when she faints in
slow-motion and all her bones seem to liquefy. But it’s typical of this
spectacular misfire that this is supposed to be one of the amusing bits
– instead of being a slightly harrowing image of emotional crisis.
But
the most objectionable single aspect of this misbegotten movie is in its
presentation of the manor’s servants. Silent, perhaps even mute, they
observe the aristocrats’ shenanigans with beatific, bovine smiles on their
faces. In one especially horrible scene, they line up – for no good reason
– on each side of a flight of steps as the protagonists go through the
motions of another dead-in-the-water bit of comic business, and we notice
that several are kitted out in insultingly ‘picturesque’ country-bumpkin
costumes. For everyone who thought that the mercifully little-seen Relative
Values was the nadir of this kind of nonsense, Importance of
Being Earnest plumbs new depths. After Gosford
Park, there really is no excuse.
2nd
July 2002
(seen 15th June, UCI Silverlink, North Shields)
For other
films rated 1/10 and 2/10 check out our Diorama
of Dishonour.
by Neil
Young
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