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Oscar Wilde once said Lord Henry Wotton was 'what the world thinks me' and Dorian Gray, 'what I would like to be - in other ages, perhaps'. It is just possible the age we live in today - with botox and plastic surgery more than a match for Basil Hallward's painting - would have allowed Wilde to embrace the Dorian Gray within him. Certainly it has given director Oliver Parker the chance to explore parts of Wilde's classic 'The Picture of Dorian Gray' that Victorian society would simply not have allowed to be seen. So we have Ben Barnes' Dorian visiting gin palaces and whore houses in a bleak London which seems to welcome his pact with the devil for eternal life. For those unaware of Wilde's story, Gray is a beautiful, but naive, young aristocrat who becomes the muse of the probably homosexual (overtly in the film) Hallward. But twisted by the hedonistic wit of Lord Henry, Gray becomes jealous that the painting will keep its youth, while he must lose his.He makes a wish that the picture will become old, while he remains forever young - in return for his soul. While Parker's film makes real many of the inferences of Wilde's novel it also pushes the boat out further; celebrating Sibyl Vane as Ophelia, adding elements of horror to the plot with a moving, gurning picture and even incorporating a whole new chapter of Gray's life to the plot. The film certainly maintains the Gothic horror of Wilde's novel, and even some of its wit, but it is doubtful whether it is as thought provoking or intelligent. Perhaps, one might say, more cosmetic surgery than real substance.
Oscar Wilde once said Lord Henry Wotton was 'what the world thinks me' and Dorian Gray, 'what I would like to be - in other ages, perhaps'. It is just possible the age we live in today - with botox and plastic surgery more than a match for Basil Hallward's painting - would have allowed Wilde to embrace the Dorian Gray within him. Certainly it has given director Oliver Parker the chance to explore parts of Wilde's classic 'The Picture of Dorian Gray' that Victorian society would simply not have allowed to be seen. So we have Ben Barnes' Dorian visiting gin palaces and whore houses in a bleak London which seems to welcome his pact with the devil for eternal life. For those unaware of Wilde's story, Gray is a beautiful, but naive, young aristocrat who becomes the muse of the probably homosexual (overtly in the film) Hallward. But twisted by the hedonistic wit of Lord Henry, Gray becomes jealous that the painting will keep its youth, while he must lose his.He makes a wish that the picture will become old, while he remains forever young - in return for his soul. While Parker's film makes real many of the inferences of Wilde's novel it also pushes the boat out further; celebrating Sibyl Vane as Ophelia, adding elements of horror to the plot with a moving, gurning picture and even incorporating a whole new chapter of Gray's life to the plot. The film certainly maintains the Gothic horror of Wilde's novel, and even some of its wit, but it is doubtful whether it is as thought provoking or intelligent. Perhaps, one might say, more cosmetic surgery than real substance.