That fraud William Shakespeare

One of the things I enjoyed most about Roland Emmerich's Anonymous, which was one of my top ten films of the year it came out, was how it made me really reconsider the authorship of Shakespeare's works. I had known there were theories that the Bard was not actually the Bard, but that some other figure living at the same time (obviously) was the one who actually put pen to paper and wrote Shakespeare's peerless body of work. Several candidates had always been considered, and Anonymous takes the position (spoiler alert!) that it was Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford, who couldn't reveal his identity because playwriting was considered one of the basest activities a member of the aristocracy could ever pursue.

But what really sold me on the fact that someone other than Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare's works was an interview I heard with Anonymous screenwriter John Orloff on the podcast The Q & A with Jeff Goldsmith. Orloff presented a truckload of evidence, both actual and circumstantial, about why it simply could not have been Shakespeare. Here's just one: Shakespeare never traveled outside England, yet a dozen of his plays describe Italy with a level of detail that indicates he had been there not once, but multiple times.

The conversation among academics about whether Shakespeare was a brilliant genius or a total impostor has always tended to fall on "brilliant genius" side of the scale. Academics, especially those who have devoted their careers to studying Shakespeare, have seemed unwilling to admit that they have been lionizing a reprobate, and have therefore cast the Shakespeare deniers as no better than whack jobs who might just as soon start telling you about UFOs.

I'm wondering if that conversation is starting to change, though.

In the space of a week's time on my viewing schedule, two new movies have renewed the charge -- albeit in a cheeky manner -- that Shakespeare was just an opportunist. I'm starting to wonder if that position is becoming steadily more mainstream.

First it was the movie I saw last Monday, Only Lovers Left Alive. "What is Shakespeare doing in a Jim Jarmusch vampire movie?" you might wonder, if you haven't seen it. Well, I'll tell you, but only after the requisite SPOILER ALERT to clear anyone out of the room who doesn't want to be here.

In addition to being hundreds (thousands? that's an altogether different discussion) of years old, the vampires in Jarmusch's film have also hobnobbed with some of history's most influential cultural contributors. In fact, the two main vampires (played by Tom Hiddleston and Tilda Swinton) are still hobnobbing with one now: Kit Marlowe (John Hurt), one of the others who was suspected of having written Shakespeare's works. See, Marlowe never died back in the late 16th century. He faked his own death and went underground as a vampire who's still living to this day. (He never died in the traditional sense, anyway.)

The movie is not content merely to make the connection to Shakespeare. It's quite clear, from several references, that Marlowe definitely did write Shakespeare's works, at least in this movie's universe. At one point Hurt muses (paraphrasing here) "I wish I had met him [Hiddleston's character] before I wrote Hamlet ... he would have made the absolute perfect model for the character."

Quite by coincidence, I then saw Mr. Peabody & Sherman yesterday with my three-year-old, one of several gestures toward removing him from his mother's presence on Mother's Day. (My son displayed his best behavior yet in a film, and I quite enjoyed the movie.)

The Shakespearean reference here is just a throwaway, rather than a major character, but in one of the title characters' jaunts back through time, they are seen in a room, handing a manuscript to a man who can only be Shakespeare. Shakespeare then signs his name to it and cackles maliciously. So Mr. Peabody & Sherman doesn't follow any of the standard schools of thought about who might have written Shakespeare's words -- it ascribes the responsibility to a time-traveling dog and his adopted human son.

Of course, I do realize that it was just dumb luck that I saw both of these movies in one week -- especially since no two movies might attract more different audiences. I also realize that 98 out of 100 films that hit theaters make no reference to Shakespeare at all, and the two that do are unlikely to tackle the authorship of his works.

Still, I have to wonder -- are we all finally starting to agree that this Shakespeare guy might have been a total fraud?

I'd say the idea is gaining momentum, in any case, and these two movies make for especially interesting examples. One of them goes to the trouble of having a major character take on the role of the man who ghost-wrote Shakespeare. At one point he even struggles with the fact that he wasn't recognized for these efforts, and reserves a couple choice epithets for the man who actually got the credit. The other film contains just a throwaway two-second joke, but it also goes to more trouble than it need to, making the man cackle, as though his taking credit were an act of intentional mischief and bad faith, not just cowardice.

If there is anything so identifiable as a "trend," I'd like to hope Anonymous gets some of the credit. Like whoever that man (or woman???) was whose deeds have gone unrecognized, Anonymous itself did not receive its proper due when it was released. I hope both injustices are something that time, and a choice application of some basic logic, will correct.

What's wrong with "what if"?

For the past two weeks, I've borne the burden of being one of the only people I know who's seen Anonymous ... and also one of the only critics who seems to have liked it. It's got exactly a 50 on Metacritic, which is, technically speaking, "mixed or average reviews." But the critics who like it seem sheepish about that fact -- those who don't are a lot bolder, buoyed by the implicit support of millions of snarky moviegoers, many of whom have not even seen it.

The reasons not to like Anonymous write themselves. It's directed by Roland Emmerich, an infamous hack responsible for idiocy like 10,000 B.C. It posits the idea that William Shakespeare did not write his own plays -- not a new idea, but also not a widely accepted one. And it includes numerous suppositions about what could have happened with other characters, many involving scandalous things about Queen Elizabeth -- such as the idea that she had several bastard children.

But it's this last point that people seem to be taking the most issue with, and not specifically because it besmirches Elizabeth's name. The doubts that Shakespeare wrote his own plays go back to before such luminaries and skeptics as Mark Twain and Sigmund Freud, and even the critics who didn't like the film can admit that it's an impressive accomplishment for its much-maligned director, who didn't seem capable of tackling such a subject. No, the critics looking to vent their aimless dislike for the film choose the fact that much of its action is imagined, and based only loosely on historical fact.

I say: So what?

Forget the fact that it's a movie, a work of fiction, and that it exists on the most fundamental level for the purpose of selling tickets. Loose interpretations of the facts, the altering of minor details, the rearranging of events in the chronology ... these things are to be expected in the attempt to make it work better as a narrative. And if done well, they contribute toward distilling the essence of truth, if not always literal truth.

So forget that we could allow this stuff for purely artistic reasons. What about the fact that pretty much every historical movie contains a sizable percentage of "what if"?

Since no one was present to record the conversations that occurred between 16th century noblemen, one must make guesses about the content of those conversations. It's the only way to go, unless you are so paralyzed with fears about inaccuracy that you stick to documenting only the things that exist in some kind of public record. And that would make for a pretty damn boring movie.

I guess what sticks in the craw of this film's detractors is how many liberties were apparently taken. To suggest that one of England's most celebrated queens spawned several fatherless children and jumped from bed to bed seems like sacrilege to some.

But if you parse that argument, it suggests that you should only make conservative guesses about things that may have happened with real people. If you play it safe, you are in the clear. But since when does a good drama play it safe? One of my favorite things about Anonymous is how much balls it has -- not only for its depiction of Elizabeth, but for suggesting that Shakespeare may have been just an opportunistic miscreant, wrapped up in unsavory deeds all the way up to and including actual murder. (This last is not stated outright but merely intimated.)

And why can't we take Shakespeare off this pedestal? I just finished listening to a podcast that's new to my repertoire called The Q&A with Jeff Goldsmith, where he talks to Anonymous screenwriter John Orloff about not only the incredibly ambitious structure of the script, but plenty of the issues related to the authorship of Shakespeare's plays. Orloff, a so-called Oxfordian (which means he doubts the authorship), and Goldsmith, a so-called Stratfordian (which means he doesn't), go at it pretty well regarding some of the contentious facts about the case. In every instance I thought that Orloff -- who has studied this more than Goldsmith, granted -- scored a point off Goldsmith, convincing me even more than his movie did that Shakespeare was not who history says he was. Without going into too many of the specifics, let me just outline a few: 1) It is known that both Shakespeare's parents and his children were illiterate. 2) No document exists from that period that was written in his hand, making him a total anomaly among his contemporaries. 3) The plays imply a knowledge of French, Spanish, Italian, Greek and Latin, and Shakespeare never went to school. 4) A third of his plays take place in Italy and describe it in great detail, though Shakespeare never actually traveled there. 5) All the conditions that likely needed to have been in place for him to write those plays, were actually in place for a nobleman like Edward de Vere, who's played by Rhys Ifans in the movie.

What's more, there's an actual academic theory that de Vere and Elizabeth were lovers, which gives a scholarly justification to even some of the film's most controversial "what if"s.

But let's dial back down to just the idea of "what if"s. We allow "what if"s to enter into many of the movies we love, in two distinctly different ways: 1) What if it did actually happen this way? 2) What if it had actually happened this way? Let's not forget that one of the most celebrated films of the last few years, Inglourious Basterds, includes an alternate reading of World War II that we know did not happen -- it's simply fantasy. Hitler never died in a rain of gunfire at the hands of a couple American commandos who were also setting a movie theater on fire. Yet that film was nominated for best picture and showed up near the top of a number of best-of lists.

But you don't even have to offer wild examples of alternate histories, and you don't even have to go particularly far into the past. One of the most realistic films of the past ten years was 2006's United 93, which imagines what might have happened on board the doomed September 11th flight when the passengers revolted against the terrorists, bringing the aircraft down in a Pennsylvania field. There are only a few things known about what actually did happen -- such as Todd Beamer saying "Let's roll" -- so the rest is up to the imagination of a screenwriter. Sure, that screenwriter (Paul Greengrass) stayed pretty much within the bounds of what "probably" happened -- he didn't suggest that aliens beamed aboard the plane and took out the terrorists.

But is saying that Elizabeth might have had illegitimate children the same thing as saying that aliens intervened with the September 11th attacks? I don't think it is. I think it's very possible that Elizabeth had illegitimate children, and just because we don't know about them doesn't mean we can't infer their existence based on things we do know ... and that we can't write a script in which they do actually exist.

And let's not forget that there is already a very famous movie -- an Oscar winner, in fact -- that imagines a lot of things that Shakespeare might or might not have done. That movie, Shakespeare in Love, was met with almost universal acclaim. There was no controversy about what was depicted, or at least no controversy that reached the layman -- no one ever had a big problem with the idea that Shakespeare might have shaken a bad case of writer's block at the hands of a muse who won his heart.

And you know why that is? Because it was unambiguously positive toward Shakespeare. If you do doubt that Shakespeare wrote his plays -- which I certainly now do, though it does not affect my appreciation of them in the slightest, because I still find it incredibly impressive that someone wrote them -- what's wrong with suggesting that he may have had some unsavory traits? A man who accepted a deal like that, to be a front for works he didn't write, is morally compromised at the very least.

And if you're saying you only want positive interpretations of Shakespeare on film, then you are just being an intellectually dishonest film fan.

Oh, and remember how I briefly mentioned Sigmund Freud earlier? He too is a character in a film releasing in the fall of 2011, which will have to suppose a lot of things about him: David Cronenberg's A Dangerous Method.

Okay, so you can't object to the idea that Shakespeare might not have written his plays, and you can't object to Emmerich's execution of the story, and you can't object to the details of the story -- unless you're simply saying you would have made other choices if you yourself were the screenwriter, and that's kind of splitting hairs.

So, like, what's your big problem?

Go see this thing before it whimpers out of theaters for good, with none of your money. Which it's worked harder than most films to deserve.

Everything but a horror movie

It's the Friday before Halloween ... do you know where your horror movies are?

Who'd have thought we'd so notice the absence (for the first time since 2003) of a new Saw movie? Now there are simply no scary movies being released on the Friday before Halloween. How unlikely.

Okay, maybe not so unlikely ... Paranormal Activity 3 and The Thing both came out earlier in the month, presumably to put more asses in the seats before Halloween actually rolled around. Smart strategy.

And perhaps that's why counter-programming is so abundant on the October 28, 2011 release date. Without a perceived front-runner for this weekend's box office dollars -- that is, a perceived front-runner among new releases, as all movies will be grappling with the phenomenon known as Paranormal Activity 3 -- a number of other movies have jumped up to the fore to stake their claim to this weekend's available dollars.

In fact, I now have to laugh at myself for this post, in which I wondered whether March 10, 2011 might be the busiest release date of all time. In retrospect it seems quite funny, especially now that I've seen all the movies that came out on that date, and they were no great shakes. I contended that Battle: Los Angeles, Red Riding Hood, Mars Needs Moms and Jane Eyre (which I later discovered was only opening in limited release) were about as hot as it got for movies releasing on one date. Of course, now I know that only Jane Eyre is actually a really good movie, with Mars Needs Moms being decent and the other two being guilty-pleasure laughable at best.

Clearly, back then, I wasn't expecting a release date like October 28th, 2011.

Roland Emmerich goes legit

The movie I've been looking forward to most for a couple months now is Anonymous, Roland Emmerich's attempt to lift himself out of the bowels of the disaster movie gutter and contribute something thoughtful to the world of cinema. I've discussed previously that I love a genre I've made up called the "wax-stamp movie," which is any movie in which the production design is such that a wax seal either is or could be used. (You know, the kind used to keep a parchment letter from coming open, back in the day.)

Anonymous certainly qualifies in that regard. Which makes it the last movie I would have expected Emmerich to direct.

I'm going to choose not to hold his previous career against him and go in to this movie with an open mind -- especially since it looks fantastic. And Emmerich's most recent film, 2012, is actually my favorite film he's ever directed, so maybe he's finally figured out how to do this job after so many years in the business.

The thing I wonder in a humorous sort of way is whether this will become one of those "issue" movies. I don't know how I started thinking this, but it seems that when a director (or star, or producer, or what have you) makes a movie on a certain sociopolitical hot-button topic, they sometimes try to spread the word about whatever the particular cause is, during rounds of press interviews and (if it works out this way) during award-show acceptance speeches.

I don't think Emmerich will win -- or probably even get nominated for -- an Oscar for this movie, but I do think it'll be funny if he decides he needs to take up the campaign about whether Shakespeare really was a fraud. Which wouldn't be a very popular cause to promote in the same way that, you know, gay rights (Milk) or water contamination (Erin Brockovich) may have seemed like causes their stars or directors needed to promote.

Shirking Shrek

I couldn't find online the one poster that first gave me the idea for my take on Puss in Boots, the spin-off from the Shrek franchise starring the voice of Antonio Banderas. That poster gives my sub-heading a bit more meaning than the poster I've chosen does.

It was actually a billboard, and I started seeing it on my drive home from work a month or two ago. It shows a vaguely expressionistic, purple-colored drawing of the face of a cat with the name Puss in Boots below it.

No reference to Shrek, and certainly no visual call-out to the signature Dreamworks animation style that made the title character in this new movie famous. (Man, really wish I could locate that image.)

But this poster here is enough different from the vaguely bulbous animation style of the Shrek movies, and few if any of the posters make a reference to this film's origins within the Shrek universe.

Curious, right?

Latin American chaos

Speaking of posters that do or don't do what they're supposed to do, I find the Rum Diary posters to be some of the most effective I've seen in a long time.

Pair the posters with the trailers and you get a terrific environs in which to set a movie:

Latin American chaos.

There's something I find primitively exciting about the potential for bacchanalian drunken chaos set in a country where they speak Spanish. Do you get me? ("We get you sir!") (Hmm, don't know where that came from. Starship Troopers, I think. )

Anyway, the trailer put me in the perfect mood to imagine a series of wild adventures, many of them actually or theoretically involving rum, in the vaguely lawless version of Puerto Rico created for this movie.

Granted, Puerto Rico is an unincorporated territory of the United States, and in that sense is not really Latin American. But you get what I'm going for, I think. Anyway, you said you did two paragraphs ago. Let's just say this movie looks really fun and I am very excited to see it. (And it could be the Hunter S. Thompson-ness of this movie, more than its Latin American-ness, that I'm responding to.)

One thing I think will be interesting -- and I really should read more about this -- is that this is the director's first movie in 19 years. Bruce Robinson, a name I vaguely recognized, last directed the movie Jennifer 8 in 1992. Love to hear how he found his way back into the director's chair after all these years -- especially in a high-profile project starring Johnny Depp.

Justin Timberlake, action star

It's rather amazing to me how many films Justin Timberlake has now made -- he crossed over from being primarily a singer to primarily an actor a couple years ago -- and he has yet to appear in what you would call an action role. He's got the features for it, it just didn't happen until now.

And when it did happen, that action role had to be in service of a high-concept science fiction plot.

In Time may not end up being a good movie -- in fact, I'm starting to be worried that it won't be -- but it won't seem like some kind of cash-in for Timberlake either. This apparent update of Logan's Run is clearly a movie with ideas, even if they may not end up getting executed effectively.

Just reminds me again how smart Timberlake's choices have always been. Sure, he's made the occasional dud like The Love Guru, but far more often he's selecting material that is interesting or challenging in some way, such as Alpha Dog, Black Snake Moan and The Social Network.

Okay, okay, so 2011 hasn't been his greatest year on record. I haven't seen them, but I hear that Bad Teacher and Friends With Benefits are nothing to write home about.

Look, I just want to praise the guy. Is that okay with you?

The smart romance

It occurs to me that Like Crazy, as original as it will probably be in many ways, is the latest in a string of similar movies that we hope will be a "smart romance."

It may just be me and I may be just taking a very quick look at it, but doesn't this movie remind you a little bit of things like (500) Days of Summer and One Day?

Which is not to say that Like Crazy borrows from either movie -- it seems to be a far less whimsical affair than (500) Days, and it was made pretty much at the same time as One Day, only One Day happened to release a couple months earlier.

More than anything I'm identifying a hunger for independent movies in which two beautiful young actors -- not too beautiful, just beautiful enough -- are involved in some kind of lyrical, semi-tragic romance. You could probably throw in a movie like Blue Valentine, even though that movie is presumably a lot sadder than this one.

Well, I didn't particularly care for (500) Days and I didn't see One Day, whose negative reviews kept me away. But I admit this hunger in myself, and so I'm hoping Like Crazy is good. If the reaction it received at Sundance is any indication, it will be.

*******

More than anything, this weekend at the movies marks an unofficial start to the cinematic home stretch of 2011. Two weeks ago we got a pair of remakes, and last weekend was dominated by the genre giant Paranormal Activity 3. Next week it's November, and many of the year's high-profile award contenders are going to start hitting the theaters with regularity.

Before I get stressed out about all the things I can't see -- Martha Marcy May Marlene and Take Shelter already in theaters -- I'll just try to focus on which of the above movies I'll see this weekend. As of now, Anonymous is the top contender, with Rum Diary a close second.

One thing I can tell you I won't be seeing this weekend:

A horror movie.

In the theater, anyway. On video? Hell yeah! At least one if not several.

It's Halloween weekend, after all.