A miracle is not to break the laws of nature, but to set them straight. So goes the final line, spoken by a Viola de Lesseps now resigned to her transatlantic destiny, and in this sentence lies the entire poetic and programmatic manifesto of "Shakespeare in Love". John Madden’s film, from a masterwork of a screenplay by Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard, is not a biopic. Nor is it a historical film. It is an act of narrative sorcery, an apocryphal genesis that sets itself a task as arrogant as it is sublime: to tell how the greatest love tragedy in Western literature was born not from ink and parchment, but from the blood, mud, and feverish desire of a broken heart.

Tom Stoppard’s imprint is the trigger of this intellectual time bomb. Anyone familiar with his Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead will immediately recognize the method: take a sacred, unassailable text and illuminate its margins, explore the wings, give voice to what History (or the Canon) has left in shadow. There, two minor characters became the protagonists of a Beckettian existential drama; here, it is the creative process itself, the demiurgic act of writing, that becomes the hero of a story that coils in on itself in a dizzying game of mirrors. The film postulates that Romeo and Juliet was not an invention, but a transcription. A sentimental dispatch from the front lines of an impossible passion, where the young and gifted Will Shakespeare (a feverish and perfect Joseph Fiennes, perpetually caught between divine inspiration and the most earthbound despair) finds his muse in Viola de Lesseps (Gwyneth Paltrow, in a performance that earned her an Oscar as celebrated as it was contested, but whose radiance is undeniable).

The structure is a metatextual tour de force. Every event in the lives of Will and Viola finds a counterpoint, a direct echo, in the drafting of the play. Their first meeting at the ball becomes the scene at the Capulet’s party. Their stolen kiss on the balcony is transformed into the play’s eponymous scene. The clash between the two rival theatre companies, The Rose and The Curtain, echoes the feud between the Montagues and Capulets. The film constructs a narrative architecture in which "reality" and fiction are no longer distinguishable, a postmodern pastiche that, unlike so much self-referential art, is never cold or cynical. On the contrary, it pulses with a disarming warmth and sincerity. It is a game, of course, a witty invention, but it is a game in which we desperately believe, because it touches upon a universal truth: art is not born in the hyperuranion of Platonic ideals, but in the glorious mess of life. It is born from impossible deadlines set by a producer on the verge of bankruptcy (a magnificent Geoffrey Rush), from the vanity of actors, from fortuitous accidents, and, above all, from the urgency to give form to an emotion that would otherwise consume us.

The venture by Madden and Stoppard is reminiscent, in spirit and intelligence, of another masterpiece about artistic creation: Singin' in the Rain. Both films are set in a moment of technological and cultural transition (the shift from silent films to talkies there, the foundations of modern theatre here), and both are brilliant romantic comedies that serve as a vehicle for a profound reflection on their own medium. Both celebrate the chaotic and collaborative alchemy that transforms the lead of production difficulties into the gold of cinematic (or theatrical) magic. And, most importantly, both reject philological pedantry to embrace a higher, emotional truth. The Elizabethan London of "Shakespeare in Love" is not historically accurate, not the one of stench, plague, and endemic violence. It is a soundstage London, an idealized reconstruction, almost Pre-Raphaelite in its pictorial beauty, where even the most disreputable tavern has a romantic patina. This is not a weakness, but a coherent stylistic choice: the film’s world is itself a stage play, a set on which characters who are living archetypes move.

In this theatre of the world, every role is chiseled to perfection. Colin Firth is an odious and ridiculous Lord Wessex, the pragmatic and unimaginative obstacle to poetic love. Ben Affleck, in a then-surprising casting move, embodies the boundless ego of stage star Ned Alleyn, delivering some of the film's funniest moments. And then, of course, there is Judi Dench. Her Queen Elizabeth I is a masterclass in cinema. In a handful of minutes, with a few sharp lines and a soul-piercing gaze, she creates an unforgettable character of power, intelligence, and melancholy. Her final wager, her verdict on the ability of a play to show the very truth and nature of love, is the film's philosophical seal. She is the representation of the ideal audience: demanding and cultured, but deep down, yearning to be moved and surprised.

Viewed in its context, "Shakespeare in Love" is also the swan song of a certain kind of cinema. Released in 1998, it represents the apex of the power of Harvey Weinstein's Miramax, a cultural war machine designed to produce smart, literate, well-written films destined to dominate awards season. Its controversial Oscar win for Best Picture against Spielberg's titanic Saving Private Ryan was not just a clash between two films, but between two visions of cinema: on one side, the visceral and technically revolutionary war epic; on the other, the literary, witty, and exquisitely constructed costume rom-com. The latter's victory was seen by many as a triumph of levity over gravitas, of the word over the image, of craftsmanship over grandiloquence. Today, years later and with the awareness of the system that produced it, the film's magic remains intact. Indeed, its nature as a perfectly polished film-object seems almost like a relic from a lost cinematic era, a time when a work based on the finesse of the word and the intelligence of its structure could become a global cultural phenomenon.

The film is peppered with delights for the aficionado: the young John Webster, future master of Jacobean drama, who lurks about like a little gothic urchin in love with blood and stage violence; Christopher Marlowe, Shakespeare's great rival, who appears briefly to (unwittingly) provide the play's plot; the cameo of the screenplay provisionally titled "Romeo and Ethel, the Pirate's Daughter." Every detail is a wink, a tile in a mosaic that celebrates not only Shakespeare, but the love of theatre and literature itself.

In the end, "Shakespeare in Love" is a magnificent lie that tells us the truth. Not the truth of how Romeo and Juliet was actually written—information that, in the end, would be a mere footnote for academics—but the truth about the very nature of inspiration. It tells us that the greatest stories are not invented from nothing, but discovered in the tumult of the human heart. That every line of love was first lived, every tear first shed. It is a fantasy, an Elizabethan daydream, but it is a dream that explains the origin of the most enduring dream of all. It is a miracle that does not break the laws of history, but sets them straight into a form more poetic, truer than truth itself. And what more could we ask of art?