BEFORE: I tried to do the right thing yesterday, and recycle two old PowerMac G5s from my office. My printer died and I figured that since the local Mac service center had a trade-in policy, I'd lug what are essentially two giant paperweights (or perhaps boat anchors) over there, trade them in and put the credit toward a new printer. I had access to a dolly, some cardboard and some bungee cords, so the only thing making it difficult was the fact that it was the most humid day of the year so far. (It kept threatening to rain, which would have cooled things off, but it never really got around to it, so you never knew if you needed a jacket or an umbrella, or if you would make it to your destination before you got soaked. How annoying.) I muddled through and wheeled the computers over to the service center, only to find out that they don't offer trade-in on any computers over 10 years old, a fact that was not pointed out in any of their signs or advertisements. The clerk started giving me web-sites that would offer third-party software that could make the paperweights useful again, but I figured that was way too much work, and offered them up for recycling at zero value. At least I know they'll be disposed of properly, and metals won't be seeping into the groundwater from a landfill, but jeez, at least give me a $5 gift card for the effort of dragging these things in!
Wrapping up the Colin Firth section of the chain, as he carries over from "Magic in the Moonlight", and if you've noticed, I've been slowly slipping back in time a little each night - from the modern "In the Cut" to "Where the Truth Lies", set in 1957, to the late 1920's seen in "Magic in the Moonlight", and tonight we're in London in the 1890's. Damn, it was so subtle that it might lead one to think it wasn't even planned. Coincidentally, tomorrow's film takes place in the 1860's.
THE PLOT: In 1890s London, two friends use the same pseudonym ("Ernest") for their on-the-sly activities. Hilarity ensues.
AFTER: I must confess that I know nothing about the work of Oscar Wilde. I don't know much about Wilde himself, only enough to get me through trivia matches, and the fact that watching an Oscar Wilde film starring Rupert Everett is about as close as I get to celebrating Pride Month. When I was young I stuck close to animated films, comic books and videogames, and maybe I'm in a state of arrested development or something, but I still love animated films, comic books and videogames. But I'm TRYING to be an adult, and that means I'm trying to develop a love for more lofty fare.
(ASIDE: I watched part of the 1966 "Batman" movie this afternoon, something I loved as a kid, but to me as an adult, it's darn near unwatchable. It's campier than all the "Austin Powers" films put together, and I compiled a list of Nitpick Points a mile long. What did I ever see in it, except that Catwoman in her tight suit used to make me feel all funny? But if that movie never existed, we wouldn't have had the 1989 "Batman", and by extension we never would have gotten to "The Dark Knight Rises", so there's that.)
This Oscar Wilde film is similarly silly, but maybe there's stuff in it that was also influential, in its own way. Maybe every time there's someone on a soap opera who was raised an orphan, who then finds out he's the secret heir of Lord Thwickenthwat, some hack writer is being influenced by Oscar Wilde, and doesn't even know it. This play is about society men who pretend to be something they're not, to romance women - dare I draw a connection to a film like "Wedding Crashers"? If Wilde's intent was to make fun of society's notions of romance and to expose the mercenary nature of marrying well, it's not a big leap to reality shows like "The Bachelor", now, is it?
Like "Where the Truth Lies", there's a double meaning in the title - it's important to be "earnest", meaning truthful, sincere and heartfelt, but it's also important to be "Ernest", since apparently Victorian women were quite stricken with the name and all wanted to marry someone with that name, since we all know that you can tell everything you need to know about a husband by his first name, even if he's lying about it. But that's it, that's the joke - the one joke in the whole play/film, which gets repeated over and over. (The joke doesn't even completely work, because the name and the adjective aren't spelled exactly the same. Sorry, Oscar.)
To be fair, the two men, Jack and Algernon, use the pseudonym for different purposes. Jack becomes Ernest when he's in the city, and when he's in the country, refers to Ernest as his brother - this enables him, presumably, to romance women in the city without long-term consequences, and to skip out on paying his restaurant bills. Algy - who for a long while preferred the practice of "Bunbury-ing", which is pretending to be visiting a sick friend named Bunbury to get out of family obligations - begins adopting the name Ernest when he's in the country, I guess so he can romance women there without long-term consequences.
Heavens, what will happen when Jack's fiancée meets Algy's sweetheart, and they each think they're in love with Ernest, and for a while they think they're both talking about the same man, who doesn't really exist, and it takes them all of five minutes to sort out who's who, and they'll be mad at each other for a while, but then they'll bond with each other and be mad at their men, until it all gets sorted out? Won't that be a real hubbub, a proper farce? Umm, I guess so.
It's sort of ironic if you think that Wilde probably never got to write the play he wanted to - in his mind, perhaps Jack and Algy should have fallen in love, turned a bromance into a romance, before the truth of parentage is revealed. The Abbey Theatre in Dublin produced this play in 2005 with an all-male cast, and you have to wonder if the result was closer to what Wilde could have produced if society at the time had allowed it.
Also starring Rupert Everett (last seen in "My Best Friend's Wedding"), Reese Witherspoon (last seen in "American Psycho"), Frances O'Connor, Judi Dench (last seen in "My Week with Marilyn"), Tom Wilkinson (last seen in "The Grand Budapest Hotel"), Anna Massey (last seen in "The Machinist"), Edward Fox (last seen in "Gandhi"), Patrick Godfrey.
RATING: 4 out of 10 cucumber sandwiches
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