Tempests

Ok so at the moment I'm trying to watch as many adaptations of Shakespeare's The Tempest as I can find. In the last couple of days I've watched Julie Taymore's recent gender bending version, and Peter Greenaway's Prospero's Books.

Greenaway's Prospero's Books is something to behold. More or less all lines of The Tempest are spoken or narrated by John Gielgud who plays Prospero. A Prospero who seems to be writing the play itself, with the scenes being played out in his mind(?). At least that's my interpretation of it.

I was familiar with Greenaway's style having watched The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover but it seems like any Greenaway film will take you by surprise no matter how  familiar you are with his work. For example this film opens with a young putto-looking boy perpetually urinating on model boat. This is Ariel causing the tempest.

Prospero does not live in a magical island, but rather in a towering baroque palace. Each scene, in typical Greenaway style looks like a renaissance painting to the extent where the majority of people on screen at any one time are naked. It’s a wonderful  piece that falls somewhere within the categories of theatre, opera, cinema and performance art. Gielgud's Propsero evades any of that pompous regal authority that other actors succumb to with the role, and instead seems positively human. His random interjections showing off the magical books he owns, were both amusing and touching.

Michael Clark's realisation of Caliban was sublime. Like all other characters in the film he doesn't speak his lines, but he moves, slithers and dances across the screen majestically.

Ariel unambiguously plays Prospero's muse in this version and is called upon every time he wishes to pen another scene. The spirit is represented as a young boy, an adolescent boy and a young man - perhaps with Prospero completing the final stage as the elderly gentleman.

Ariel

Either way, the film is a visual tour de force with the scenes involving Miranda and Ferdinand being particularly spectacular.

It seems a shame that Peter Greenaway's name is noticeably missing in any discussion of British Cinema, and indeed in 90s cinema. Very few of his films have received a Blu-Ray release, and they are in dire need of one as most DVD releases were sub-par and the films have suffered as a result. 

Julie Taymore's adaptation is some what less inspiring. The film boasts a strong cast with Helen Mirren, Ben Whitshaw, Russel Brand, and  Djimon Hounsou among the names you should be familiar with. Its main point of interest is that the character of Prospero has been changed to a female 'Prospera', however this sex change breathes no new life into the text, it just seems to have been done to allow Helen Mirren be in it.

The film has not been received well by critics, yet scathing one star reviews do seem a bit extreme. It’s a perfectly enjoyable straight-forward adaptation. I particularly enjoyed Whitshaw's Ariel, and Hounsou's Caliban. The main problem is that Shakespeare's play is so vociferous  in magic, rhythm and song  yet Taymore's version is noticeably lacking in these areas. Every now and then a brash rock soundtrack blares, and nausea-inducing special effects swirl around unnecessarily. The result is a stylised mess, which is shame because Taymore's first venture into filmic Shakespeare is the stylised treat of a film, Titus, which I would recommend to everyone.