W.E. (2011)

“Darling, they can’t hurt you if you don’t let them. ” – Wallis Simpson

Number of Times Seen – 1 (26 Oct 2014)

Brief Synopsis – A lonely married woman obsessed with the love affair between Wallis Simpson and Prince Edward of England who abdicated his throne for her, reflects on her own life and love as she learns more and more about the two lovers lives together.

My Take on it – I have always been fascinated with the story of Edward and Wallis because it truly showed how much he loved her.

To give up so much for the ability to spend your life with the person you love made the whole idea sound so romantic and very few can doubt that he truly deeply loved her.

Things like this happen in movies, and book, but it’s rare to have such a story about love be real…

The problem for me I guess is that I’ve been wanting to see this movie for 3 years hoping it would tell the tale of their love and  show how devoted they were to each other.

Unfortunately, this movie isn’t a biopic of their story but instead it tries to weave two love stories together by using the story of Edward and Wallis as the real anchor.

It fails mainly because the story is told in flashback from the perspective of a woman in a failed marriage seeking real romance.

The stories don’t mesh so well and both of them seem incomplete and choppy when moving back and forth between the “present” and the past.

This movie was the second (and so far most recent) movie directed by Madonna.  I cant say whether she is a great director or not, but she sure knows how to handle music in a movie. The soundtrack was great and she wrote a hit song as the movie’s theme song called Masterpiece.

It won the Golden Globe for Best song that year, but was ineligible for the Oscar because it wasn’t the first song played over the credits or some strange Oscar rule like that.  Instead Man or MUppet (From The Muppets (2011) won).  Surprisingly, there were only two songs in teh running that year (The other was from Rio (2011); “Real in Rio”)

Check out the music video for Masterpiece

Bottom Line – Expected this to be better than it was but the way it moved between the two stories just doesn’t flow well. Still has great music as one would expect from a movie directed by Madonna.  Average historical story that should have been better.

Rating – BAFTA Worthy

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