Stayed up till the wee hours to catch this on IFC. What should have been engrossing, I found distant and rather boring. The film seeks to make Wilde a revolutionary, but we're not given a profound insight as to what made him tick. No mention of the woman (yes, woman!) he fell in love with who left him for Bram "Dracula" Stoker! No mention of his role in the aesthetic and decadent movements and the socialist writings that sprang from it. Or his trashing rooms in drunken rampages. While he was, as shown, well-received in the rough-and-tumble Leadville during his tour (the film doesn't mention he was in America to repair his wilde-man rep and counter the popular backlash against aestheticism), it omits that he was ripped by the upper-crust, especially in San Francisco, of all places! Worse, Fry's and Law's performances reek of the gay stereotypes of cattiness, selfishness and narcissism. I got little feel for how big Wilde was (George Bernard Shaw was a fan) and how truly spectacular his fall was. Nor does it show him conflicted in the least. You get the impression he knew he was gay, married because it was expected, and expected the Mrs. to put up with his shenanigans. The film then alters the key episode of his life. Douglas was arrested (not shown) after Bosie egged Oscar to charge the old man with libel (as shown). Since, on the trial's second day, our hero admitted to perjuring himself (also not shown), it's understandable why it was revised to make Wilde the ultimate poster boy for "the love that dare not speak its name." How ironic that Oscar's great love (besides himself) later converted to Catholicism, married, and spent the rest of his life attempting to bring gays to "justice."
