Mark Reviews Movies: THE HAPPY PRINCE

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Review by Mark Dujsik | October 25, 2018

The final five years of Oscar Wilde's life must have been anguish. Tried and convicted of "gross indecency" in 1895 for his sexual activity with men, Wilde spent two years in prison, with the inclusion of hard labor on his sentence. After his release, the writer, under an assumed name (because of his fame and the publicity surrounding his trial), spent the rest of his life in exile throughout France—away from his wife, separated from his two children, and scraping by on the kindness of a few friends. When he died on November 30, 1900, at the age of 46, he had nothing, except a few friends nearby and the terrible pain of meningitis.

To examine this section of Wilde's life is important, if only to see how far a successful and famously good-natured man can fall because of a single act of obvious injustice against him. Writer/director/star Rupert Everett's debut movie behind the camera, though, is entirely about the fall. Actually, The Happy Prince is entirely about the fallen. Wilde's trial and time in prison are reduced to a few brief flashbacks, while the writer travels across a foreign land and ultimately dies in great suffering in a hotel room—with famously atrocious wallpaper.

Even more reduced in this limited biography of the man is the entirety of his career. There are, perhaps, only two times that we see him before the trial, when he was happy and funny and decadent. That's the Wilde of whom most people know—the Irish writer of great comedic plays (including The Importance of Being Earnest, one of the greatest—full stop), poems, and that remarkable novel The Picture of Dorian Gray (his only foray into the form).

His pithy wit was slightly more famous than his self-aggrandizement, both of which often blended together in such a way that one can't tell if he was sincerely egotistic or mildly mocking himself. Such a moment makes up one of the short scenes of Wilde's pre-trial life, as he applauds an audience at one of his plays for having the good sense to enjoy it. If they can recognize and celebrate a genius like his, after all, that must mean they have the spark of genius within them. The other scene of contentment has Wilde, played by Everett, telling his short story "The Happy Prince" to his two sons—a tale that continues its telling to two poor brothers, one sickly and the older one his lover, in Paris, as his own illness escalates.

The point of these stray observations—about the real Wilde and a few scenes in the movie—is to note that there's very little of Oscar Wilde, as we know him, in this story. That notion, clearly, is Everett's point, as the movie is all about how that Wilde faded away from his past self and the public on account of bigoted legislation. The conviction was personally and professionally disastrous for Wile, and the movie seems personally and professionally unfair to the writer, whose accomplishments, personality, and life's meaning have been relegated to a long slog of a depiction of the most miserable years of his existence.

The morsel of a plot has Wilde on the run from being recognized in France. Under the pseudonym "Sebastian Melmoth," he travels from village to village, sometimes with friends in tow or meeting them at his destination.

The most important relationships here are with Lord Alfred Douglas (Colin Morgan), whose affair with Wilde indirectly led to the trial (The writer sued his lover's father for libel, and in that trial, the evidence that would lead to Wilde's conviction came to light, although you won't hear much about that fascinating tale here), and Robbie Ross (Edwin Thomas), his friend and eventual literary executor. Also a near-constant is Reggie Turner (Colin Firth), a fellow writer and friend who's present at Wilde's death. Emily Watson plays Wilde's wife Constance, who holds out hope that her husband will return.

Everett's performance works in that we can sense the spark of the former Wilde throughout the misery. Mostly, we're left regretting the fact that the actor didn't have the opportunity to play the character during the writer's peak.

The peak is vital to a story such as this. Dramatically, a fall without the preceding rise doesn't mean much. It's simply a flat line of one theme, one emotional tone, and one elongated event. That's the feeling of watching The Happy Prince, which ignores the arc of its central subject's life, simply to make us feel bad about how it ended.

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