The Happy Prince

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source: The Happy Prince

I bought this A Happy Prince DVD film from a HMV shop a few days ago at a reduced price as the company is closing down for good. I took it home and I did watch it. As a lot of people know much about Oscar Wilde is from reading somewhere that Oscar Wilde was caught by the police for messing around with other men in a public loo. This incident caused him to lose a lots of friends from high society, so maybe the film maker should show the story from A to Z in order ( from when he was young to when he grows old and dies ), so that viewers can learn more about him. But no, the film begins with a disgraced old Oscar living in exile in France. After a while, the film switches to a different time line. Then it switches to another different time line... Very difficult to follow, especially as the real story is not that exciting anyway. I don't think they needed to speak in French while he was living in France to make the film authentic. Very distracting. A lot of good films about WW2 the film characters did not speak in German. Also, I was distracted by the low quality wigs which Oscar and the other main male actors were wearing to watch the film. Their wigs were very, very stiff like a tooth brush. All the main male actors wore too much make-up; very thearical. The half- baked nudity scenes and sex scenes were embarrassing to watch.

This is a considerable personal achievement for Rupert Everett who scripted, directed and starred in this film of Oscar Wild's little known final years. The story is always interesting and the direction has moments of genius however it is Everett's wonderful performance that lifts this film above the ordinary. This is a part that he seems to have been born to play and he captures all the pain and regret leading up to Wild's death.Excellent support from Firth,Morgan and especially Edwin Thomas. The best scenes and essence of the story are captured when Everett is singing 'The boy I love is up in the gallery' in a Paris music hall and when he tells the story of the 'Happy Prince'... you can physically feel the pain of a wasted and lost talent.

"The Happy Prince" is a new British historic drama focusing on the final years in the life of renowned British writer Oscar Wilde. The latter is played by Golden-Globe nominated actor Rupert Everett (slightly under the age of 60) and this film is also the first theatrical release by him as writer and director, so obviously it is a project pretty close to his heart. It runs for 105 minutes and features more established British actors like Firth, Watson and Wilkinson next to Everett, but eventually their characters may bear some significance, but it's all about Everett's Wilde and nobody else. With the exception of the final moments, he is in every scene and he simply makes the movie and everything about it. The film is less about his art really because there are many moment when we hear that his writing career was basically over, for example when he mentions that he sold his newest work to several publishers without having written a single word about it. It's not a biopic. The focus is just on the man's last years and how he was struggling not necessarily with his homosexuality, but with how homosexuality was perceived back in the day. His own approach to (gay) love was dedicated and true, even if the man he showed an interest in did not always have an easy time due to who Wilde was. The part with the alias is the best example. But also they struggled with his preferences because it is never really clear who he loves, who he is just interested in and who he cares deeply about. the only similarity there is that basically all his love interest were considerably younger than him, even very young at times like the flower vendor near the end. The film is as much about homosexuality as it is about everything else. The scene with all these men meeting and one guy's mother eintering the room and expressing her reluctance with the scenario clearly thinking they hid women somewhere while not even getting close to the core of the men's sexual preference because of who she was and how stuff like that had no place in her life by any means. Then there is also the aspect of money, financial struggles and how Wilde eventually moved that deep into poverty that he had to ask a fan for some money in what was maybe the most heartbreaking scene of the film as his sexual tendencies destroyed not only his career, but his life as a whole. The meltdown scene with the boys following him and bullying him is the most obvious example there. Still, he can be lucky throughout the entire film that he never lost touch with friends or was really completely alone, also thanks to his charisma for sure, which stayed for a long time after his writing skills had faded away apparently. For example, during several occasions you see that he was a pretty appreciated entertainer and singer too and not because he was everybody's fool. So I give a big thumbs-up to Everett here, it's fairly impressive for a rookie project there's no denying. And it's obvious that he drew a lot of inspiration from all the big filmmakers he already worked with when making this collaboration between several European countries. It's not a film that will attract a great deal of awards recognition during the big ceremonies I'm afraid, even if it was rock solid in terms of sets and costumes and make-up. I definitely enjoyed the watch and it never dragged and for a film as close to 2 hours as to 90 minutes, that is always a success. I somehow doubt Everett can repeat the awards success Fry had with the same character many years before, but it would not be undeserving at all. And I am writing this as somebody who has virtually no connection with Oscar Wilde as I have not read a single piece of his works I think and also as somebody who is not that big on period pieces in general. But this one deserves to be seen for sure. A thumbs-up without a doubt. Go check it out. Everetts portrayal alone is worth the entire watch.

We are, of course, blessed in England with a language in which often a single word can be made to do double duty and capture a given situation to perfection. I employ such a word in my summary where 'wild' refers not only to the focus of the film Oscar Wilde but also to his ambivalent feelings to his bete noire Lord Alfred Douglas aka Bosie, the object of Wilde's love/lust who treated him abominally and could truthfully be described as Wilde's nemesis. Rupert Everett's passion for and commitment to the project is undeniable and shines through every frame but like at least one other person writing here I was strangely unmoved ultimately and I cry at card tricks. There was in England - indeed may still be - a manufacturer of brass instruments named Boosey & Hawkes which allowed the observation that Oscar Wilde was fond of blowing his own trumpet - a Bosie & Hawkes. Bosie, it appears, was bad for Wilde in more ways than one.

"And all men kill the thing they love/ By all let this be heard/ Some do it with a bitter look/ Some with a flattering word/ The coward does it with a kiss/The brave man with a sword!" Oscar Wilde (Rupert Everett) Because I am a devoted fan of Oscar Wilde, I had to open this review of The Happy Prince with his famous final stanza from The Ballad of Reading Gaol. It's his wisdom for those foolishly thinking love is always benign, and it signals Wilde's own ironic awareness of his complicity in landing for two deadly years in Reading for gross indecency (homosexuality). The stanza also may allude to the disaster he brought the many he loved, male and female. As his first and final love, Robbie Ross (Edwin Thomas), declares, "He'll eat you." The Happy Prince tells of Wilde's last days after his tragic imprisonment; he is subject to taunts even from Parisians, so famous was he round the world. An "exiled fairy" he called himself. Because homosexuality was outlawed in England, it is especially ironic that the once most famous author of the 1890's should be vilified with universal shame. In 2017 he and other convicted sodomites were pardoned, small comfort to those of us who believe he could have had more greatness like The Importance of Being Earnest and The Ideal Husband to come. This film carefully chronicles Wilde's self-destructive self-indulgence, living high when he didn't have the funds and returning to the arms of Lord Alfred "Bosie" Douglas (Colin Morgan), the beautiful young man he loved, whose love cost Wilde the years in jail and everything else. Wilde himself says, "I am my own Judas." The recurring theme song, "The Boy I Love is Up in the Gallery," resonates with the joy and sorrow he brings to himself. Empathetic director-actor Everett also suffered professionally when he came out at the age of 25. This film, however, should bring him universal acclaim. That story of Wilde's life is available on film and in biography, but Everett has given us the final period not dramatically and universally enjoyed until now with a fine performance he sharpened from many years playing the doomed wit on stage, set here in Paris, Normandy, and Naples, and set production in Bavaria and Belgium. This Wilde is disconsolate, weary, and dissolute with not enough of his witticisms and epigrams to my liking. In fact, as seemingly realistic as it is, it is perhaps too gloomy for a general audience. But for literature and art house lovers, it's nectar. Somewhere in the middle of the film, Wilde says his most famous final words: "I am dying beyond my means. I can't even afford to die. This wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One of us has got to go." Wilde is arguably the most quoted author after Shakespeare, and these words show how even death by meningitis can't stop his wit. BTW: Research his countless epigrams-you'll spend an afternoon in bliss. These are three samples: "I think that God, in creating man, somewhat overestimated his ability." "Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much." "All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That's his." Dorothy Parker gives the ultimate praise: "If, with the literate, I am Impelled to try an epigram, I never seek to take the credit; We all assume that Oscar said it."

The sets, actors are superb. This film reveals the obvious degenerate and selfish behavior of Wilde in his pursuit of his sexual preferences, to the emotional abuse toward his wife, whom he married for money, and as an appearance of propriety. It is likely that he contracted syphilis due to his irresponsible behavior, and passed it to his wife. Online articles dispute this, but both his and her symptoms point to latter stage syphilis. In the end, he comes off as a selfish cad, unable to discern good from bad, love from lust. 4 stars for the acting and set designs.

Rupert Everett fulfils a long-held ambition here to make a film about the last days of Oscar Wilde, and in the title role he is simply terrific - he is never off the screen. To write it and direct it as well, however, is to take on too much; indeed the need for an objective view is often apparent when it comes to narrative and structure. The film starts slowly (with a dreadful cardboard cut-out of London by night that could have taken from Olivier's wartime Henry V) and it's some time before the flashbacks (and flashbacks within flashbacks) begin. Supporting performances, especially from Colin Morgan as Bosie and Emily Watson (under-used) as Constance, are excellent and the photography,(particularly in the Italian sequences) beautiful, though I found the half-shadows of the faces in the candlelight rather tiresome. I must add that, for someone who is penniless and constantly on the run, Wilde does possess a large wardrobe. There is more humour than one might expect (I won't spoil your enjoyment by quoting any of the jokes but I found the sequence where the priest (Tom Wilkinson) comes to give Wilde the extreme unction especially hilarious). Great attention is paid to the soundtrack, but why the use of Tchaikovsky's Pathetique Symphony at the end? All in all a fine effort, but I did leave the cinema strangely unmoved.

I was unsure whether a film about his last years was a story worthy of telling. I was wrong. The genius known as Oscar Wilde had more than his fair share of flaws. This is laid bare in his final story.