The sun is exploding. The sun is still. England won the match. Groups of men, topless, pass by, chanting groups that seem one moment joyous, next moment aggressive.
‘ENGLAND!’ he shouts through the open window to the older woman in a parked car, also possibly English.
‘We moved the TV, that’s HD you know’.
The group of topless men kept walking, chanting, shouting, would that be the group of men that hunted down and bullied Oscar Wilde in France?
‘You look so nice, you are so tanned’, she exclaimed to her newly arrived friend.
All, seem trapped in a pre-defined role of gender macho-power, slutty-needy, playing it out on a stage for nobody.
A group of children passing by, one mockingly says ‘let’s go to the cinema, let’s watch a movie’.
PROM TIME. The sign on the florist’s across.
If there is a God, it is the God Oscar Wilde envisaged in his fairy tales. Powerless to the world we have made, but passionate. Fair. Later.
Most narratives of his life are sympathetic but always hold a hue of pity.
So sad.
The beauty of the Happy Prince is that it is unapologetic.
The author is never presented as sad, pitied, no. He is completely, utterly, passionately in love with life. His addictions are choices. His troubles societal. His traitors small. His friends loyal. His lovers ecstatic. His wife a victim, like him. His crowds adoring, then mobs, then adoring. Different crowds. The high classes, all classes, the underclass, men trapped in class, men depressed, men oppressed, men with lust for life.
The film is sad. Yet at no point do you feel pity. This is the magnificence of it. Any sadness is an attack on the societal norms and a homage to the abysmal pain of unrequited love.
But Love.
Love.
LOVE.
Love of life.
Love of a man.
Love of men.
Love of joy.
Unapologetic love.
‘He is still going out clubbing! so sad, he is 43! at his age!’ a friend told me. A friend that spent all his 20s clubbing.
‘At his age’.
Partying, enjoying, pleasures have to have an expiry date.
After that, oh dear. Loser. Sad.
Not in this film.
Celebrating Decadence; Beautiful, exquisite Decadence. Feared by all. Because Decadence is a choice against continuation, against the species, against all that is supposed to be.
It is the yellow books; the numberless nights that are a blur; the tortoises painted gold.
And all this, not in contradiction, maybe that’s what life is about. Exactly, those tortoises painted gold. Statues that love so much they give away their emerald eyes to help others. Birds that love so much that choose to die.
That is a life worth living. Even if short. All the rest, a sensible, boring world.
‘When did you lose sight of Him?’ he was asked on his deathbed.
‘In Clapham Junction’
more info:https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/reviews/the-happy-prince-review-rupert-everett-delivers-moving-and-surprising-biopic-of-oscar-wilde-a8397086.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscar_Wilde
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