I Actually Understood the Movie

For this blog in my British Literature class, I was given two options:
1) Read several Beatrix Potter books
2)Watch a film based on an Oscar Wilde play
Well, just like any other high-achieving, very smart student, I watched the movie. To my surprise, I actually liked it! The movie that I chose to watch was The Ideal Husband. While I watched this movie, I took some of the techniques I had learned in my high school Shakespeare class and applied them. I paid attention to the characters; What were their purposes? Comical or for the plot? I paid attention to foreshadowing: What does he mean when he says this? What does the father's role in wanting his son to get married have to do with anything? I also read the short summary of the movie that's on the back of any movie (which means I didn't really know much about it at all) before I watched it so that I could better understand what it was about. What I knew about the movie before I viewed it was that some man was about to be blackmailed.
The hardest thing about watching this movie was the fact that it's done in the old English way. This makes sense since the play was written in 1895. So, if anyone was wondering what this movie is about, then you should just watch it. It's only an hour and a half long, and - while it doesn't have very much of today's action, violence, or profanity in it - you just might surprise yourself with watching the movie.
I thought the main story of the movie was a very interesting part of the play. While this story was the main idea, there are other events that are happening. For example, Lord Goring's father and his love story. This happened to be my favorite part of the movie. I liked the character; he was charming, funny, handsome, and a typical lady's man. I also sympathized with him. His father kept placing tremendous pressure on him to get married, and when we find out that he almost did get married, (thank God he didn't get married to Lady Cheveley) the reason for the split is a good one. I could tell that this character was put into the play for comic relief. While he was part of the problem for awhile, (messing up when he thought Lady Gertrude was in the room next to him and Sir Robert instead of Lady Cheveley), you couldn't help but love him.
I guess I should probably talk about the big idea of the whole play: Sir Robert's folly. He made a stupid mistake, but he loves his wife so much and doesn't want that to change, so he never tells her what he did. I can't help but feel for this man. While it's wrong to lie to your spouse, he was only trying to protect her. He was only trying to keep up this perfect image of himself that she had in her mind. I like this idea. It's so real to today's society. We all hold certain things in our lives to a higher standard than what they are that, when we find out something bad they or it did, we can't help but feel betrayed. We only set ourselves up to be let down. We can't expect everything to be perfect or anything to be honest.
Now that you know my opinion of the movie, I hope that you can see why I think that. It's full of many different stories that intertwine to make one interesting view. Stay tuned, and next time I'll be looking at something else from the British area!