 So,
who is Earnest anyway? Well, John Worthing says he Earnest, but
only when he is in town. And Algey Montcrief claims he’s Earnest,
but just in the country. Gwendolyn is quite earnest when she says
that she could love only Earnest, and her mother is terribly earnest
when she says Gwendolyn will do no such thing. Cecily is the most
earnest in her love for the mysterious cousin Earnest, but she hasn’t
even met him.
Confused
yet? And that is only the beginning.
I loved
The Importance of Being Earnest. It has beat out Moulin
Rouge as my favorite film of the year. A few years ago I stumbled
upon the movie, An Ideal Husband
in the video store, watched it and promptly went out and bought
it. Both of these films are based on Oscar Wilde plays and are extremely
well done, and are created by the same company.
 The
dialogue is witty and fast-paced; the humour is good clean fun.
And it helps that it stars Colin Firth, who I first fell in love
with when he played Mr. Darcy in Pride and Prejudice. Firth plays
John Worthing and Rupert Everett plays the disreputable friend Algey
Montcrief. The cast is rounded out by Frances O’Connor (Gwendolyn),
Reese Witherspoon (Cecily) and Judy Dench as the formidable Lady
Bracknell.
John
has worked out a plan that lets him live the life of a dignified,
if a little dull, landowner in the country, but be the disreputable
high living scoundrel in the city. No one knows that once John leaves
to go to the city and take care of another problem created by his
younger brother, Earnest, he becomes the notorious Earnest himself.
The
trouble starts when John confesses to Algey. Algey decides to use
this secret to visit John’s life in the country and assume
the role of younger brother Earnest.
I won’t
even try to untangle the plot further than that for you. It gets
terribly complicated but in the end it manages to untangle again
with everyone in his or her proper place.
 The
message of this story is not a surprising one. Everyone who lies
and deceives ends up messing things up even further. Even the prim
and proper Miss. Prism (Anna Massey) has a dark lie in the past.
The men both fall in love, but they fall in love as Earnest. And
the lies keep compounding one on top of the other. But honesty doesn’t
pay. The lies of the present and the mystery of John Worthing’s
origins must be cleared away before the story can be resolved.
Okay,
okay, so without all the lying the movie wouldn’t be nearly
as entertaining. But in reality, if we were as deceiving as these
people our lives would be one giant mess. And the lies do catch
up to you in the end. Look at Earnest, I mean John. He could never
have married Gwendolyn without explaining the truth. Love was probably
the last thing John was thinking about when he devised this plan,
but often our lies can have far-reaching effects.
In
the end, this movie really is about the importance of being earnest,
and it recommends that we all are a little more so.
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