WriteOutLoud

Friday Matinee: Shakespeare in Love

Balderdash though the story may be (nobody has these kinds of details about Shakespeare's life or methods), and despite Gwyneth Paltrow--though even I have to admit she deserved her Oscar, as did Judi Dench (though she didn't win)--I love this movie! For its vivid evocation of life in 16th-century London, of course, but chiefly for what it says about the challenges of making art out of life (and vice versa). About plausibility, the elastic between truth and fiction, when passions arise and collide, and--snap!--truth turns Romeo and Ethel, the Pirate's Daughter into Romeo and Juliet.

Speaking of plot evolution, I wonder what WS would do with this one: two lovers together briefly, joyously; then separated for nearly 30 years by necessity, distance, misunderstanding, bad timing, bad luck, bad choices--separated, in other words, by everything but the only finality: death.

Then comes the 180-degree turn--who knows what brings it on? What could account for it? (Here's the probability problem!) Gradually but steadily, bad luck turns to good; seemingly irrelevant yet right choices are made; distance collapses; they meet again. They say a few words, and the past dissolves; they see themselves in each other's eyes not as they are (distinctly middle-aged, a little crumbly around the edges) but as the young, vital, passionate, fearless lovers they still are inside--the people we all, always, are--even into old age. Nobody else sees it. But everybody does it; we all, always feel ourselves young.

Plausible? Nahhh. Never happen. Especially these days, virtue never triumphs. But what if it did, and this story actually happened--how would it come out, I wonder? What would Shakespeare do with it? Tragedy (always ends in death), comedy (tragedy without the last line; always ends in marriage), history (always ends in a question mark; cf. Hamlet)--those are our choices; his categories. And he's the one who taught us how to think about our lives. Not Milton, not Spenser or even Chaucer (though he goes a long way) or--god forbid--Wordsworth. Shakespeare taught us to recognize who we are. What would he make of those lovers now?

Why I'm Not Going to See Under the Tuscan Sun

I have several excellent reasons, and here they are:

1) Frances Mayes' beautiful book is content to offer a woman's love affair with a house and a region without cheesing it up via standard schlocky girl-meets-boy romance. I knew Frances Mayes slightly when I was teaching at SFState and doubt she's pleased with the "improvements" Hollywood has made in her story. (I give her joy of the $$, though, with all my heart; she's a lovely person and a great writer and teacher.)

2) After seeing this bigscreen travesty, lots of young, single American women will mistake themselves for Diane Lane (and fiction for reality), clean out their savings accounts and head for the Mediterranean in search of rich new meaning in their lives. What they'll get instead will startle them in mainly unpleasant ways. They will be sitting ducks. They will have invisible targets painted on their springy little American derrieres, and they will get hit. They can't imagine how hard until it's over.

How do I know this? Absent the Diane Lane inspiration, entirely on my own, I already did it, and here's what happened:

One summer, in order to brush up my Spanish for one of the language requirements for my PhD, I rented a fabulous house for practically nothing in a tiny village in southern Spain. Once I'd gotten used to the smell of goat that permeated every narrowed, cobbled street, I quickly got used to flushing with a bucket and doing my laundry on a stone washboard at the village mina with all the bowlegged old ladies shrouded in black, who took me to their hearts and gave me great advice ("Stay away the priest's house! He is bad man!" "Drink at Communist bar with us, not Plaza bar, all tourists there") along with recipes for gazpacho and pear-stuffed roast chicken.

The Latin lover showed up right on schedule, not as handsome as I would have wished but still very Latin and very romantic, with all the flourishes I promised myself on the way over I would avoid at all costs but somehow didn't recognize in person. He weaseled his way into my house, established himself right away and started bossing me around. Then he got nasty.

One day, as we lay sunning ourselves on the beach (me nursing a fastgrowing case of the creeps), he told me about his ex-fiancee. Her parents objected to the match and spirited her away, whereupon he launched a campaign of revenge that started small and petty (superglue in doorlocks) then escalated to bizarre public humiliations involving disguises and . . . well, you get the drift. I knew right then I had to get out. Not just get out. Escape. Which I did, huddled under a blanket in the back seat of a Volvo driven by one of the locals, to the nearby beach town, where I caught a bus and then a train and then a plane, hyperventilating for two days, all the way back to Boston.

He wasn't through with his fiancee's family, though. He told me he had one last big scam in store for them. He outlined it for me, and said I would read about it in the papers, and that he would get away with it. A year and a half later, I did read about it in the papers. And he did get away with it. It all went down just the way he said it would. And he's still out there somewhere.

So that's why I'm not going to see Under the Tuscan Sun. If you see it, and you're a young American woman with itchy feet, remember: IT'S FICTION. IT'S A FANTASY. Travel, yes, but travel smart. And don't expect miracles. Expect trouble. That way, you can dodge it gracefully while having something actually resembling a meaningful adventure--on your OWN.

OPEN RANGE: WHY is there Kevin Costner?

(I'm stealing the line from Anthony Lane, who used it on Demi Moore after she flounced her way through The Crucible.)

Why are we stuck with this Costner person? What is he FOR? He has one facial expression (it says, Duhhhh) and one tone of voice (Ummmmm). He's "cute," but no more so than the average SoCal surfer dude. In Open Range, the camera keeps trying to crawl into his left eye; I've never seen closeups so tight. But WHY? There's nothing THERE! We're looking at FURNITURE.

OK, so golfers and baseball players and cowboys tend to be dull folks who do mostly dull things except when somebody makes a birdie or hits a grand slam or shoots somebody. Stories are told and movies are made about characters who BREAK those molds, who do things that seem dull to other people but who find what they do interesting or beautiful or funny, and transmit that fascination to the reader or audience. Kev don't do dis. Kev stay dull.

All the more so for contrast with Duvall. That wicked cackle, tongue between his teeth, thrills me every time; he's a naughty boy still, even over 60, with his little melon-gut just starting to pooch out. I can't get enough of him. He's the texture and fire and flesh of the West. He's the money shot, every time.

So I sit through the interminable Kev-drone, lap up Duvall, and watch Annette Bening try to keep a straight face while playing opposite Costner. I decide Kev is like Woodrow Wilson, one of those people who succeed by failing. I just hope he doesn't run for President.