Rupert Everett’s forthcoming film about Oscar Wilde’s tragic final years in exile has attracted some rave reviews, with talk of an Oscar for Oscar. Now it has been praised by the writer’s grandson, who says it conveys “the spirit” of the man and his genius.
Merlin Holland, Wilde’s only grandchild and an expert on the writer, told the Guardian: “I found myself terribly moved by it.”
The film, titled The Happy Prince, receives its UK premiere on Tuesday before its release nationwide.
It has been a labour of love for Everett, who struggled for years to get it off the ground. He wrote, directed, produced and stars in the drama, about the writer hounded from England following his notorious trial for gross indecency and imprisonment.
Wilde died in poverty in France in 1900, aged 46. In the film, he is on his death-bed recalling his once-glittering career, his long-suffering wife, Constance, and his destructive love affair with Lord Alfred Douglas.
Screen depictions of famous writers have sometimes fallen foul of family members. But Wilde’s grandson describes this one as “wonderful” and says that, while Wilde wrote of life imitating art, Everett has got close to art imitating life.
Recalling screen portrayals by Robert Morley, Peter Finch and Stephen Fry, he said: “Rupert’s is probably the best. Fry’s was very intellectual, which would figure with Stephen’s character. Rupert’s is terribly emotional. In Oscar, there is both the intellectual and the emotional. But, at this stage of his life, he’s living on what’s left of his emotions, and I think that’s where Rupert wins.”
He observed that Finch’s film was made in 1960, when homosexuality was illegal: “So there really wasn’t a great chance of portraying Oscar as he was.” Everett features “a lot of naked men at a party”, but “stops short of being explicit for the sake of sensationalism”, he said.
“If a film like this can make people laugh, think and be sad about what England did to him, it’s going to help make people realise that being gay is what Oscar himself might have said was a perfectly normal aberration.”
Holland’s Wilde books include the Irish Peacock and Scarlet Marquess, the definitive account of the libel trial. He said that previous Wilde portrayals, whether on stage or screen, have either galloped through his story or “over-sensationalised a life which is sensational enough. This film’s got it right.”
Everett has long been associated with Wilde, starring in masterpieces like The Importance of Being Earnest and An Ideal Husband, and The Judas Kiss, David Hare’s acclaimed play.
Holland said: “This is not intended to be a feelgood film. It tells a very sad story of how Oscar’s persecution by the authorities in 1895 turns him into a wreck of a man in his last three years. But Oscar managed to keep the most wonderful sense of humour. That’s very well brought out by Rupert.”
Asked how his grandfather would have felt about being portrayed on screen, Holland said: “He’d probably pick up on small points and say: ‘It wasn’t quite like that – and then tell you something even more outrageous.”
As Wilde put it: “There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.”