![]() ![]() ![]() The way the film weaves the time periods together is near seamless, creating a natural progression that feels accurate to the human experience while keeping a steady pace. The film’s visual style reflects the character’s outlook, providing muted colors for his present, but warm, more vibrant tones for his memories. Like the Prince, Wilde’s heart broke at their rejection, leaving him to die a slow death over the span of 5 years, but rightfully immortalizing him as an artist for his contributions to society. Wilde gave pieces of himself out to the masses, only to be rejected when the truth about his sexual preference came out. ![]() Wilde brought joy and laughter to countless people, much like the Happy Prince did when he had the swallow take everything of value from his person and give it to the poor. As the Happy Prince, Everett puts Wilde in the position to view himself as the martyr of his own story, and to an extent, this is true. Being imprisoned for being himself was beyond Wilde’s control, and he was a victim of the time, but his self-destructive and -indulgent nature ended up being the ultimate caustic force that leads to his early death. In it, we see glimpses of his glory days so as to establish a stark contrast between the past and present.Įverett develops the story full of well-deserved sympathy for Wilde, while never turning the film into anything close to being apologist. Through the lens of the character’s alcoholism, we revisit his greatest triumphs from his memories, the way any drunk would fondly recall the past. The film’s story is very carefully crafted around the child’s tale, turning Wilde into the prince by showing his own social and physical decline. Everett shows us a grim, but intimate look into the mind of the artist, using Wilde’s children story “The Happy Prince” as a somber allegory. In this obvious passion project, Rupert Everett writes, directs and stars in the film as gay icon Oscar Wilde. The Happy Prince examines the last few years of the writer’s life with a severe and uncompromising honesty that Oscar Wilde himself would have appreciated. A “crime” that he was only recently posthumously pardoned, only 120 years too late. His early life is well-documented, being a known figure in the public’s eye, but Wilde’s true complexity comes after he is found guilty of homosexuality. With works like “The Picture of Dorian Gray”, “The Importance of Being Earnest”, and “An Ideal Husband”, Wilde had the rare privilege of simultaneously being part of high society and openly mocking it in his works. In fact, it was one of the keys to his undeniable charm and often helped make him the life of any party. Wilde’s flamboyant nature was a secret to no one. London in the late 1800’s was a completely different animal altogether, and The Happy Prince shows us its feral nature by providing a look into the last years of Oscar Wilde. Even now, being openly gay can still be a societal struggle, but at least in America, it’s not illegal. Most people who know of him know more about his wit than his sexual preference. His early life was filled with as much decadence as the characters he wrote about. ![]() “He found enormous reserves of sympathy and compassion in himself when he was down, although there was a bitter side to him as well.” Asked if he had ever longed to meet his patron saint, Everett delivered something like a Wildean epigram: “Meeting people is always, I think, one of the great mistakes.Oscar Wilde is well-known for his scathing, yet hilarious commentary on aristocratic society through various novels, plays, etc. “It was a riches-to-rags story,” Everett said. Wilde would die soon after, penniless and exiled, at the age of forty-six. In Act II of “The Judas Kiss,” Hare imagines Wilde, having served two years of imprisonment and hard labor, reuniting with the insolent Bosie in a run-down hotel in Naples. “The fall, I think, is an artistic statement of its own.” “He was crucified by society and then, through that crucifixion, became immortal,” Everett said. Everett’s memories of Wilde stretch back to his own Norfolk boyhood, when his mother read him Wilde’s children’s stories, including “The Happy Prince.” As a young stage actor, he appeared in “The Importance of Being Earnest” and “The Picture of Dorian Gray,” and he later starred in film adaptations of “Earnest” and “An Ideal Husband.” Still, he’s drawn less to Wilde the writer than to Wilde the tragic figure, destroyed by the era he anatomized so tastily. ![]()
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