I noticed long ago any movie about either British Royalty or Shakespeare is lavished with Oscar wins. Easy to see that's why this won Best Picture over Saving Private Ryan.
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The more I study it, the greater the puzzle becomes.
The Golden Voyage of Sinbad
Well, that and it's a better film.
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Thank you miketol. I'll mark your post.
I've been visiting this board for years waiting for someone to say "Shakespeare in Love made me want to run out and read Shakespeare again" so hearing it from a veteran is quite special. And re-evaluating Shakespeare has been its most durable effect.
Until recently I had a house in Normandy, north of Utah beach and used to enjoy talking to visiting vets, a lot of who felt like you did about SPR. 'Great opening sequence, but if a small platoon had wandered about Normandy the way they did they wouldn't have lasted a day or even a couple of hours.' I personally think it is a well-made film but I was mildly irritated by the complete omission of the Royal Navy and the British Army, though not irritated by the reference to Montgomery and only mildly teed off that the aircraft that rescued them all should have been RAF Typhoon tank busters called off from the 'cab rank'. Spielberg's history has, however, had the effect of turning D-Day, in the mind of the French (outside Normandy), into what President Sarkozy once called a 'Franco-American affair'.
They are both extremely well-crafted moments but SiL is the one where the things you missed first time around make you laugh when you finally spot them.
Incidentally, there is also a revisionist school of SPR criticism and it just came top in the Twists that ruined a Great Movie category, http://tinyurl.com/odkq5vl
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But we don't seem to.
All the big centenaries of WW1 are heaving into view and all the old clichés are raising their ugly heads. It's a pity that movies continue not just to indulge them but create new false history, like U-571, which replaces the real thing. The WW1 episodes of Downton Abbey were a disgrace, for example.
I try not to get annoyed about it and hope for better. A Band of Brothers equivalent for the Atlantic Campaign in WW2 or the 1918 Western Front campaign would both go a long way to improving things but neither seems likely with things like a Tom Cruise/Battle of Britain film or a Jackson remake of The Dambusters ahead of them in the queue. I think they've both been shelved now, thank God, but that's the type of thing that Hollywood wants.
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I like Malick but I don't think it was his best film. I'll defer to your experience as whether the combat was realistic but although it was impressively thoughtful, I think it struck a few wrong notes in its lyrical link up play between the landscape and the devastating forces disrupting it. Have you seen the Russian film, Come and see?
I think Dr Strangelove has to be in the running for the top five. Everyone arguing with the idiots who claimed the nuclear weapons made the world a safer place knew they were right after that film..
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Parts of "Saving Private Ryan" were great, and overall it was an outstanding movie. But it was not the best. The effort to manipulate our emotions, just went too far I think. "Shakespeare in Love" was just a great story, bringing Will Shakespeare to life -- no one ever did that before. There have been dozens of tremendous war movies, so SPR did not break new ground in story-telling. (Though it did in cinematography.)
share"Well, that and it's a better film."
IMO, not even close. "Shakespeare in Blah Blah Blah" was "Battlefield Earth" compared to "Saving Private Ryan".