June 18, 1999 | An Ideal Husband usually isn’t ranked among Oscar Wilde’s very best works, and that may work to the advantage of the new film adaptation. After all, when you call something a classic, that’s bound to scare off many of the very people who might enjoy it most.
In any event, don’t hold it against the movie that a few discerning eccentrics – chief among them, George Bernard Shaw – regard the play as a masterwork. They may be right, but “masterwork” has an unfortunate connotation, conjuring images of some dry and dusty museum piece. Don’t be fooled: As the film so amply demonstrates, there is nothing at all cobwebby about this comedy. Deftly underscoring both the timeliness and timelessness of Wilde’s 1895 theatrical bauble, British filmmaker Oliver Parker has done an artful job of revision and compression while transforming the play (with more than a little help from an absolutely splendid ensemble cast) into one of the year’s most elegant and intelligent laugh riots.
At first, the title appears to describe Sir Robert Chiltern (Jeremy Northam), a much-respected Member of Parliament who swears he owes every bit of his success to the inspiration of his beloved wife, Lady Chiltern (Cate Blanchett). Trouble is, Sir Robert owes even more to the easy money he made several years ago, when he passed a trivial government secret to a businessman who profitably exploited the information.
Very early in An Idle Husband, a crafty adventuress known as Mrs. Cheveley (Julianne Moore) claims to hold a letter that reveals the secret of Sir Robert’s success. “Even you are not rich enough,” she warns him, “to buy back your past. No one is.” On the other hand, if Sir Robert were to grant his approval to a dodgy land deal – a deal that would greatly benefit investors like Mrs. Cheveley – he might be able to keep the past from poisoning his future.
Sir Robert yearns for a miracle to save him. Instead, he gets something much better, and a lot funnier: The notoriously indolent Lord Goring (Rupert Everett).
On a typical day in his lackadaisical life, Lord Goring devotes most of his energies to avoiding anything that even faintly resembles responsibility or respectability. And he would have to become slightly less self-absorbed to be classified as merely egotistical. (“To love one’s self,” he murmurs, “is the beginning of a life-long romance.”) But since he is, after all, Sir Robert’s close friend – not to mention an erstwhile suitor of Lady Chiltern and a long-ago lover of Mrs. Cheveley – Lord Goring can’t avoid getting involved. Besides, the entire affair gives him ample opportunity to indulge in his favorite pastime: Listening to the sound of his own voice.
Lord Goring obviously is Wilde’s idealized alter ego: A worldly and witty man who tosses droll bon mots to lesser mortals like an indulgent parent passes candy to his children. (Everett’s nonchalantly brilliant performance is everything Wilde could ever have wanted in an on-screen doppelganger.) But there’s more to the character than initially meets the eye, just as there is more substance to An Ideal Husband than you might expect from anything by anyone as purposefully frivolous as Wilde.
By far the longest and most frankly philosophical of his plays, Husband reveals a Wilde with an insolent disrespect for the stultifying hypocrisies of late Victorian England – and an affectionate sympathy for anyone who must maneuver through the minefields of public opinion. Ironies abound in the play, and reverberate throughout the film. Sir Robert may find redemption is standing up to Mrs. Cheveley’s threats – yet he knows that, by doing so, he risks losing his rigidly moralistic wife. For her own part, Lady Chiltern is most true to her better nature only after she discovers the value of lying.
And Lord Goring, the devil-may-care rogue who mocks the pompous posturing of everyone around him, even when his own father (John Wood) is the one doing the posing – well, Lord Goring proves to be a loyal friend, a discreet confessor, an insightful counselor and, most remarkably, the very sort of gent who might risk his own happiness in order to avoid blemishing a lady’s reputation. Better still, he gets all of the best lines. Little wonder, then, that Sir Robert’s sister, the spirited Mabel Chiltern (Minnie Driver), views this saucy fellow as ideal husband material.
