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A "Wilde" ride.

CHARLES BRITTON
Special to The Jewish News

I

n the new film biography of
Oscar Wilde, a character pre-
dicts that his name will be exe-
crated "for a thousand years."
It is now just over a century since
he was convicted of "gross indecency"
— the Victorian circumlocution for
homosexual acts — and the scandal
has fallen away, leaving his reputation
even higher than it was at the peak of
his early fame.
•The sumptuously produced Wilde,
opening today exclusively at the
Landmark Main Art Theatre, is only
the third current biographical drama
based on his life: Gross Indecency, by
Moises Kaufman, enjoys successful
runs in New York and elsewhere, and
a different play altogether, The Judas
Kiss, by David Hare (with Liam
Neeson, of all people, as Oscar), has
just opened in New York after a mixed
reception in London.
Opinion makers, if not the public
at large, have concluded that we owe
Wilde a debt, primarily because he
appears to be the prime spokesman for
— indeed martyr for — the late
romantic dogma that morals have no
place in the discussion of aesthetics,
indeed that aesthetics always trump
morality.
From today's viewpoint, his trial
looks little better than a kangaroo
court. Although the charges placed
against him were true enough, hardly
anyone who writes for stage or screen
would say the law should have been
enforced. Here was a man of genius
trodden underfoot by hypocrites, big-
ots and philistines.
The fact that he was, in large mea-
sure, the agent of his own destruction
seems like a tragic flaw rather than
culpable stupidity.
Thus we have the current film,
with Wilde played by Stephen Fry,
who considerably resembles the origi-
nal. Fry is likewise a man of wit and
intellectual attainment, having written
several novels; he is probably best
known as the impeccable Jeeves in the
TV adaptation of the R G. Wodehouse
stories.

Charles Britton - writes for Copley
News Service.

5/ 29

1998

90

Here he makes a most winning
Wilde, a man of enormous charm,
gentleness and playfulness, by all
accounts an entirely accurate portray-
al. It's easy to see why his wife and
two sons adored him, even though he
was frequently away from home, hav-
ing a gay old time.
We first meet him as a bachelor on
a tour of America, on which he lec-
tured about art and beauty to hard-
bitten men in the mining towns of the
West. They meet him with curiosity
and respect; he replies with intelli-
gence and honesty.
Back in London, Wilde contracts an
advantageous and affectionate marriage
to the devoted, but ill-fated Constance
(Jennifer Ehle). A close friend, Toby
Ross (Michael Sheen), brings out his
latent tastes by introducing him to
man-to-man sex, depicted in the film
with considerable candor.
Oscar's career climbs sharply with
the production of successful plays (one
of which, the farce The Importance of
Being Earnest, has long enjoyed the
status of a classic); he has an excellent
chance of becoming rich as well as
famous, except for his unfailing ability
to overspend.
Tragically, Wilde couldn't confine
his attentions to Ross or to other
equally attractive and sensible men.
That's when Lord Alfred Douglas,
"Bosie" to his friends, comes in.
Bosie is quite simply the love of
Oscar's life, and a worse choice Wilde
could not have found. Among other
dangers, Bosie introduces him to the
world of "rent boys," where the risk of
exposure was much greater than
among. the discreet upper classes.
Bosie also is self-centered to the point
of cruelty and probably more than a bit
unbalanced, a trait he inherited from his
father, the brutish and equally head-
strong Marquess of Queensbury (the
same one who sponsored formulation of
the rules of boxing).
The marquess (Tom Wilkinson, the
senior man in the "Full Monty"
troupe) is constantly taking a violent
dislike to someone, and now it is
Wilde's turn. He strives to make
Wilde's relationship with Bosie into a
public scandal.
Pushed by Bosie's uncontrolled
hatred of his father, Wilde used a triv-
ial incident as an excuse to sue the

marquess for libel; it was a course of
utter folly, sealed in the scene in
which Wilde and Bosie blandly assure
their lawyer that the rumors about
them are quite false.
This opens the way for the defense
to introduce the plentiful evidence of
Wilde's "gross indecency," then a serious
offense. He goes from being plaintiff to
standing in the prisoner's dock with an
open-and-shut case against him.
Here the film depicts, but does not
explain, Wilde's passivity in the face of
fast-approaching disaster. He had
every opportunity to flee prosecution;
the government made it plain that
they had no eagerness to put Wilde in
the dock.
But he did nothing to protect him-
self, instead letting events take their
course, even though this meant public
humiliation and a harsh prison sen-
tence from which he never recovered.

Jude Law makes a strong impression as
the spoiled and resentful Bosie in

Altogether, Wilde is a fine retelling
of this story, though it suffers from
covering material that has become all
too familiar in many other versions
over the years.
Jude Law makes a strong impres-
sion as the spoiled and resentful Bosie,
and Vanessa Redgrave uses her Isadora
mode for Wilde's bohemian and some-
what cracked mother.
Fortunately, the film doesn't dwell
too much on Wilde's sad, premature
end; it's at its best, as Oscar himself
was, presenting the hothouse side of
Victorianism and allowing us a
glimpse of a time when people still
took beauty seriously. Rated R.
***