(1997) "To love oneself is the beginning of a life-long romance." At the Matchless silver mine in Leadville, Colorado, in 1882, Oscar Wilde (Stephen Fry) gave a lecture during his American tour, for which he said afterward to his sophisticated friends in London he felt like "sorbet after a side of beef."

This matchless biopic, directed by Brian Gilbert from Julian Mitchell's screenplay, based on Richard Ellman's scholarly biography of the Irish poet, playwright, and peccant aphorist (1854-1900), is without question worthy of its Oscar.

Speaking to Ada Leverson (Zoë Wanamaker) of his engagement to Constance Lloyd (Jennifer Ehle), who will be his silent and sympathetic audience, Oscar concedes: "Well, I must marry someone." His friend Robbie Ross (Michael Sheen) - "Canadian - you can tell by his youth" - comes to live with the married couple and their infant son Cyril, the first of their children. Robbie, by encouraging Oscar to act on his soaring sentiments about Greek love, releases the pent up passions like a populace from the gates of a city after a twenty-year siege.

Relieved, Wilde dips into the pool of other youths, and writes The Picture of Dorian Gray, which his mother, Mrs "Speranza" Wilde (Vanessa Redgrave) describes as: "the masks we wear as faces and the faces we wear as masks."

Following the hearty reception of his play, Lady Windermere's Fan, with its shocking speeches, Oscar makes acquaintance with Lord Alfred Douglas (Jude Law), Bosie among his friends - an Oxford student of beauty, breeding, and youth - who offers his praise: "the more frivolous you seem, the more serious you are."

An absentee father and husband (though the telling of his children's tale of a giant with a garden punctuates the narrative), Wilde spends much of his time with Bosie, helping with a threat of blackmail, accompanying "his boy" in public, to Alfred Taylor's den of vices with its "exotic blooms" of young men, and to hotel rooms where he observes Lord Alfred enjoying a variety of partners in pleasure.

Asked if he would approve of his own son's engaging in affairs with men, Wilde replies that Cyril (when he's old enough) should "do as nature dictates." Ada remarks to Constance that the upperclasses must set the example for others: appearances are what people care about.

On other occasions Bosie in a fit of pique lashes out at Oscar, accusing him of being mean, penny-pinching, and middleclass. When he tells his mother, Lady Queensberry (Gemma Jones), that he loves Oscar as a disciple feels for his mentor, she dismisses Wilde as evil. Presciently, Oscar says of Bosie (who doesn't care what others think of them), "You're my catastrophe, my doom," before charming the Marquis of Queensberry (Tom Wilkinson) during a discussion - two men at the opposite extremes of ordinary thinking - who nonetheless threatens his son if he continues to befriend Wilde with loss of allowance.

Having achieved fame, recognition, and money, Wilde admits his inability to command his feelings for Bosie, whom he realizes has been damaged by his tyrannical, unloving, whore-mongering father's bullying: "He's ashamed of loving men."

Following the immense stage success of The Importance of Being Ernest, an incidence of libel - Queensberry alleges Wilde's being a pervert, "posing as a sodomite" - offers an opportunity to take the marquis to court, a chance to deal a blow to hypocrisy and prevent further harm to others (Bosie's brother had committed suicide), though Robbie strongly argues against taking legal action for the possible consequences. Only the English run from a fight, answers Oscar: "Where your life leads you, you must go."

From the dock, facing Queensberry's lawyer, who has been cross-examining Wilde about his various controversial views expressed in his literature, Wilde magnificently replies to Edward Carson's question, "What is the love that dare not speak its name?" from Lord Alfred's poem, "Two Loves": "In this century it is such a great affection of an elder for a younger man as there was between David and Jonathan, such as Plato made the very basis of his philosophy, and such as you may find in the sonnets of Michelangelo and Shakespeare. It is, in this century, misunderstood - so much misunderstood that it may be described as the love that dare not speak its name…. It is the noblest form of affection. There is nothing unnatural about it."

He went to prison for two years, which broke his health. "There's no sin except stupidity …"

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Copyright © 2009 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
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