9/24/2023 0 Comments An ideal husband oscar wilde movie![]() ![]() Cheveley, to whom he was once briefly engaged. Mischievous, indolent and given to outrageous yet knowing pronouncements almost every time he opens his mouth, Lord Goring is just the man of the world to deal with the opportunistic Mrs. The kind of epic-scale scandal that threatens to engulf Sir Robert as the millennium approaches of course in fact did destroy Wilde-while in fact “An Ideal Husband” was playing in London. There is a great deal of Wilde in both men, for like Sir Robert, Wilde was a loving, though in his case flagrantly errant, husband, and like Lord Goring in that his mastery of the epigram belied a fundamental seriousness. ![]() When a desperate Sir Robert turns for help to his friend Lord Goring (Rupert Everett), “An Ideal Husband” at once broadens and deepens its scope, heightens its humor and shifts its focus to Goring, who becomes the film’s dominant presence, especially as played with such scene-stealing wit and style by Everett. (Moore is as memorable an adventuress as Paulette Goddard was in Alexander Korda’s 1948 film version of the Wilde play.) Cheveley is nothing if not direct with Sir Robert: He is to stand up in Parliament and endorse a fraudulent scheme for a canal in Argentina in which she has heavily invested or she will make public a letter that will reveal just how he, born poor but clearly well-connected, made his fortune. Cheveley, whose unabashed glamour and insinuating manner set her apart from more proper women, has descended upon the dashing Sir Robert at his grand London residence (looking only slightly less posh than Buckingham Palace) during a glittery soiree presided over by Sir Robert’s gracious and devoted wife, Gertrude (Cate Blanchett), a lovely young woman of noble character and intelligence. He has a vision of a responsible empire embodied in his slogan, “Commerce with a conscience,” which sounds lots like a certain presidential candidate’s advocacy of “compassionate conservatism.” Yet there is a dark secret in his life, one that most people would find far more damaging than l’affaire Lewinsky, one that makes him vulnerable to the bewitching blackmailer, Mrs. Parker has shaped the play to make it more film-friendly and relevant, but he has done so with such subtlety you would have to be a Wilde authority even to notice.īritain a century ago was the world’s superpower that America is now, and its hero, Sir Robert Chiltern (Jeremy Northam), a member of Parliament heralded as “the last decent man in London.” He is poised on the threshold of a brilliant career, with the prime minister’s office the ultimate goal, surely. Wilde was always about lots more than witty repartee, and as sparkling as his play is as drawing-room comedy, it reveals his concern with the timeless values of unselfish love and forgiveness. What is so swiftly striking about Oliver Parker’s exhilarating and elegant film of Oscar Wilde’s “An Ideal Husband” is how very contemporary it is in its consideration of morality-or lack of same-in both personal and public life. ![]()
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