SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE (1998) ¢ ¢ ¢ ¢
D: John Madden
Joseph Fiennes, Gwyneth Paltrow, Geoffrey Rush,
Ben Affleck, Judi Dench, Tom Wilkinson,
Simon Callow, Colin Firth, Imelda Staunton
Faced with a monumental case of writer's block and a looming deadline to knock off a comedy called "Romeo and Ethel the Pirate's Daughter", young Will Shakespeare (Joseph Fiennes) goes looking for a muse, and finds her in Gwyneth Paltrow. Before long, he's madly in love, and the play he's been working on has started to morph into a tragedy called, well, you know. A witty, romantic Elizabethan frolic with a script by Tom Stoppard ("Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead"), who seems to know exactly how to access not just the Bard's language, but his funny bone. Even Shakespeare would be amused.
Tom Wilkinson
(1948-2023)
