He feels very modern his aphorisms and epigrams feel like they could have been written yesterday. His plays have always been popular and I think people identify with him for living a flamboyant life in Victorian times. “It’s about his work and about his life, which are inextricably linked. We spoke to Artangel co-founder Michael Morris to find out more. Such a stellar cast further underscores the vital legacy of Wilde on art, forging paths in self-acceptance and ideas of the personal as political. Each day, De Profundis will be read in its entirety by speakers such as Ralph Fiennes, Maxine Peake, Lemn Sissay and Patti Smith while visitors to some cells will find newly-penned letters the theme of state-enforced separation by writers including Binyavanga Wainaina, Ai Weiwei, and Anne Carson. Entitled Inside: Artists and Writers in Reading Prison, the show sees the jail space, which closed in 2013, house a series of installations by artists including Marlene Dumas, Nan Goldin, Steve McQueen and Wolfgang Tillmans. It is no less than a denial of the soul,” Wilde wrote in his powerful unsent letter De Profundis, created in prison and part love letter, part treatise on spirituality, the self and religion.Ī new exhibition orchestrated by arts group Artangel will delve back into this potent prose time and time again, in the very place it was written – Reading Gaol. To deny one's own experiences is to put a lie into the lips of one's own life. “To regret one's own experiences is to arrest one's own development. Homosexuality was not made legal in the UK until 1967, and voices like Wilde’s provide both comfort and hope in the face of injustice, ignorance and hatred. Wilde’s steadfast belief in his own sexuality, and his subsequent martyrdom for it, have made his writings all the more vital for the homosexual community after him. It dictates and pervades great works of art… It is beautiful, it is fine, it is the noblest form of affection… The world mocks at it, and sometimes puts one in the pillory for it.” When questioned about its meaning, Wilde said: “It is that deep spiritual affection that is as pure as it is perfect. In the reading of letters between Wilde and Bosey, it was in the courtroom that the chilling and resonant euphemism for homosexuality, the “love that dare not speak its name,” was coined. The court transcriptions are a testament to Wilde’s courage and unfailing, unflappable wit. The tables soon turned on Wilde, and evidence was brought forth of his “gross indecency” – or homosexuality – something the writer had at turns been trying to hide, for obvious societal and legal reasons, and also attempting to garner more public acceptance and respect for. Wilde had tried to sue Sir John Sholto Douglas, father of his lover, Alfred Lord Douglas (or Bosie), for libel after a series of homophobic insults, culminating in a note left at Wilde’s club the Albemarle reading “For Oscar Wilde, posing somdomite .” To cut a long and heartbreaking story short, in 1895 – just a few months after the debut performance of his masterpiece The Importance of Being Earnest – Wilde was sent to prison convicted of “gross indecency”. (Also, there's a distractingly awful makeup job in the prison scene with his wife toward the end, looks like he's coated with gray paint!) The gay sex scenes which some other commenters have alluded negatively to are actually pretty mild, I thought - some kissing and hugging, some rather discreet huffing and puffing under the sheets, and a few bare buttocks.The story of Oscar Wilde is a brilliant, tragic and complicated one a tale that, despite many efforts, can’t easily be transformed into simple fridge magnet epithets stating that “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.” Aside from being eminently quotable, Wilde’s legacy is vital in both the literary sphere and in terms of his impact on gay rights and culture. One longs to see a more multi-faceted depiction. Stephen Fry is an inspired physical choice as Wilde, but is content to show us only a genteel, endlessly patient and saintly man, whom young men are constantly throwing themselves at. Unfortunately, the film begins with an already famous Wilde, and gives us no real insight into his beginnings or character. While not a penetrating or in-depth look into Wilde's character, it does keep your interest with a fast moving look at a fascinating life. "Wilde" is an episodic, Masterpiece Theatre-style look at the famous playwright Oscar Wilde and his notorious trial and imprisonment upon sodomy charges at the turn of the last century.
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