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The Name Is The Game |
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Italian National
Syndicate of Film Journalists 2003 |
| BASED ON: "The Importance of Being Earnest" by Oscar Wilde |
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The Name Is The Game |
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Italian National
Syndicate of Film Journalists 2003 |
| BASED ON: "The Importance of Being Earnest" by Oscar Wilde |
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RELEASED: Philippines - 16 October 2002 (limited) |
Greece - 1 November 2002 Sweden - 8 November 2002 Iceland - 22 November 2002 Norway - 17 January 2003 Italy - 7 February 2003 France - 29 March 2003 (Paris Film Festival) Denmark - 29 April 2003 (video premiere) France - 30 April 2003 Spain - 4 July 2003 Bahrain - 6 August 2003 |
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RUN TIME: 97 Minutes |
AKA: Ernst sein ist
alles - Austria / Germany |
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FILMING LOCATIONS: London, England, UK
Lancaster House, St. James, London, England, UK |
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| FILMING DATES: 23 April 2001 - 22 June 2001 | |
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DIRECTOR: Oliver Parker |
WRITER: Oscar Wilde (play), Oliver Parker (screenplay) |
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PRODUCER: David Brown, Uri Fruchtmann, Banaby Thompson |
CINEMATOGRAPHER: Tony Pierce-Roberts |
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Cast (credits order) Rupert Everett
... Algy Moncrief |
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MUSIC:
Importance Of Being Earnest Front Titles Jack Leaves For The City Algy Goes Bunburying Arrival At Lady Bracknell's The Interview Jack And Gwendolen Punting on The River The Vital Importance Of Being Earnest Cecily's Fantasy Teatime Lady Bracknell The Debt Collectors The Serenade (Lady Come Down) Perfectly Heartless Found In A Handbag "Where's That Baby?" Dr. Chausible Proposes To Miss Prism "Earnest After All" Lady Come Down |
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Reviews
| The Importance of
Being Earnest (Cert U) by CHRISTOPHER TOOKEY, Daily Mail Running time: 101 mins The Importance Of Being Earnest is the wittiest play ever written. It is also one of the most highly artificial. There is nothing real about it. Expose any of the characters' behaviour to the light of reason and everything crumbles. Consider, for example, whether there is any way that Algy Moncrief would not know that he once had a baby brother who was lost by the family nanny. Oliver Parker, who already has one Wilde film to his credit - the solid but unimaginative An Ideal Husband - has been much criticised for breaking up and reorganising Wilde's play, but he was right to do so. Wilde wasn't a screenwriter, and Anthony Asquith directed a definitive stage-bound version in 1952, starring Dame Edith Evans and a wonderful British cast. Parker has kept as much of Wilde's text as Asquith did, but he has broken the scenes up into small pieces in a variety of filmic settings, most of them apposite. He has visualised Cecily Cardew's romantic imaginings in the pre-Raphaelite, fake-mediaeval style beloved of the late Victorians. So far, so good. Parker has also tried, with some success, to bring out the darkness that lurks beneath that bright, brittle surface. This is a play, after all, in which the men have secret desires which they would rather not share with their womenfolk, and the women have absurdly romantic ideas of their perfect male. Wilde called this last work he wrote before being sent to prison for leading his own double life 'a trivial comedy for serious people'. Where Parker goes wrong is firstly with the music, which is offputtingly anachronistic (it sounds more like the stuff Bertie Wooster might have played, ten years or more later). Parker's few interpolated lines are distracting, as are a couple of unnecessary flashbacks, and I don't believe for a moment that the Gwendolen Fairfax that Wilde created would have gone to a tattoo parlour to have 'Earnest' imprinted on her bottom. At such moments, Parker seems unable to distinguish a posh back from Posh and Becks. Too much of this Importance looks like a lengthy promotional film on behalf of English Heritage. Although the sets and frocks are lovely to look at, few of them look lived in. The film's worst sin is not that it's unfaithful to Wilde, but that it's so overproduced that it detracts from the rhythm, pace and musicality that make Importance a theatrical masterpiece. In directing comedy, less can be more. Parker doesn't know when to stop, and he kills a couple of the biggest laugh-lines simply by moving the camera at the wrong moment. Despite the laboured direction, the cast is effective, especially Rupert Everett as the reprobate Algy. Playing louche lounge lizards is hardly a stretch for Everett, and the slightly camp air of naughtiness he brings to the proceedings is a reminder that in Victorian times 'earnest' was an underground way of saying 'gay'. I also liked the more laid-back performance of Colin Firth as the only slightly less dissolute but infinitely more pompous Jack Worthing. Firth gives him a bit of roguish sex appeal that stops him from being too off-puttingly stuffy for a modern audience. And, like Everett, Firth has the invaluable knack of making Wilde's dialogue seem as if he is thinking it up on the spur of the moment. The strain of maintaining an English accent tells on the American guest star Reese Witherspoon, who is merely serviceable as Cecily Cardew - she hasn't the lightness of touch which made Dorothy Tutin so enchanting in Asquith's film. And the Australian actress Frances O'Connor works a little too hard at sexiness as Gwendolen. They're both excellent actresses, but they're all too visibly acting. The others in the cast are topnotch, especially Judi Dench, with her delicately understated Lady Bracknell - here portrayed, in an interpretation for which Wilde's play gives some justification, as a jumped-up chorus girl made very good indeed. Dench is such a pro that she doesn't even try for a laugh with the famous 'A handbag!' line. Instead, she gets a laugh with the little gasp that precedes it. Tom Wilkinson and Anna Massey are charmingly old-fashioned as Canon Chasuble and Miss Prism, while Edward Fox contributes an immaculate cameo as Algy's inscrutable manservant, Lane. |
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Date: 21 October 2003 Summary: Hilarious, ironic! Brilliant adaption of the Oscar Wilde play!! ***SPOILERS*** ***SPOILERS*** Part One: First of all: It's not true that both Jack and Algy fall in love with the same woman.... Sorry, but which movie have you seen??? Jack Worthing is a rich Landlord who escapes his duties while using the fictional brother Earnest who always needs financial help being a rather unworthy person. He is unaware of his real origins because he was found as baby in a handbag at Victoria Station in London. Not a good basis to marry into society. He is madly in love with Gwendolen, the cousin of the other protagonist Algy Moncrief, nephew of Lady Bracknell. His escape route is a fictional friend Mr. Bunbury who pleasingly gets dramatically ill every time Lady Bracknell tries to fix him up with an heiress to marry. Algy has nothing but debts and is always on the run from the pending debt-prison. He has befriended Jack but knows him only as Ernest. When he finds out that Ernest is in fact Jack and has a beautiful 18-year-old ward (Cecily = Reese Witherspoon) in the country he decides at once that it is again time to visit Mr. Bunbury. Part Two: At the manor he calls himself Ernest Worthing, the ruthless brother of the landlord. Cecily, of course, falls in love with this romantic figure at once and Algy cannot help it, too. It all climaxes when Jack comes back, meeting "his brother" and Gwendolen decides to visit her love because Lady Bracknell refuses her consent to their marriage. So both girls think themselves in love with Ernest Worthing. And both girls are obsessed with marrying a man called Ernest because the name gives so much confidence. So the Christian names of our two guys is a serious problem when truth is revealed. This story is possibly the best of Oscar Wilde's works. And it's brilliantly brought into movie with just divine performances by Colin Firth, Rupert Everett, Dame Judi Dench, Reese Witherspoon and Frances O'Connor. If you only knew Colin Firth as haughty Mr. Darcy, go and find out how many different characters this brilliant actor can actually bring to life. Best entertainment ever!!! |
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