The Tempest

but impossible to understand. Saw this at the New York Film Festival tonight and must assume that the soundtrack was unfinished because I was able to understand about half of the dialog. It sounded like a mono mix, so maybe it was a temporary soundtrack or was projected incorrectly. The opening scene: completely unintelligible. Nearly every word spoken by Djimon Hisou: completely unintelligible. Hope they fix this because there is much to admire in the film: Helen Mirren's marvelous performance (most clearly spoken and reproduced), the great Ben Wishaw as Ariel, the beautiful music, magical settings, visual effects and the beautiful costumes.

Wow this is one of those movies that I am completely baffled about the low ranking on here. I agree with some of the critiques that the sound mixing could have been better but overall the film was gorgeous, overall well acted and very understandable for such a difficult play.

Someone mentioned poor special effects...I thought they were wonderful. Clearly the big money goes to plenty of trite blockbusters leaving little for pieces of art and beauty such as this. But what they lacked in money they made up for in creativity....I absolutely loved the rendition of the spirit Ariel. There was plenty of gorgeous scenery both real and mixed with CGI.

Julie Taymor never disappoints me and this is no exception!

The Tempest is not the most riveting drama, the larger realization is after all a certain weariness with it. This is given to us as a magician who halfway through the story abandons his powers of illusion, who after conjuring to him the characters and plotting the story of revenge pauses to reflect on the emptiness of the endeavor. It's still powerful then, because we are all Prosperos alone in our island with the thoughts we conjure up to inhabit.

In Shakespeare's time, the inspiration for Prospero must have likely come from the scandalous topic of John Dee, the communion with spirits and visions through crystals certainly point at that as well as more broadly the notion of a benign magic. Magic since well before Dee and up to Crowley has tried its best to mask in so much hoopla what other spiritual traditions make clear from the start: that man is an embodied consciousness with the ability to direct that consciousness to vision. Shakespeare no doubt understood this was exactly his own art, a rich and complicated magic of conjured vision in peoples' minds.

So if this is to be powerful, you have to adopt a very intricate stance. Show both the power of illusion as vision and, contradictory, the emptiness of it, the fact it is underpinned by an illusory nature of reality. Greenaway masterfully did this in his Prospero film by having Prospero's creation of the play as vision, the vision lush and wonderful, and yet at every turn shown to exist on a stage.

Taymor is too earnest to strike this stance, in fact judging by the cinematic fabrics here she seems unsure of what direction to follow. She is an earthy woman so intuitively builds on landscape, volcanic rock under our feet. Pasolini could soar in this approach judging from his mythic films, her approach is too usual and without awe. The magic is also too ordinary. A few movie effects cobbled together in earnest as something to woo simple souls like Trinculo. Compared to the novel richness of Greenaway this feels like discarded Harry Potter work. And the cinematic navigation is without any adventure, as if Taymor didn't believe there was anything for her to discover outside the play, to conjure up in the landscape itself by wandering to it, so she never strays in visual reflection.

Mirren conveys the reflection as best she can, but that is all here, too little.

In casting Helen Mirren as Prospera, director Julie Taymor adds an interesting spin to this Shakespeare adaptation.

Also CGI effects help make more sense of the story.

On the downside, film versions of the bard's plays rarely work perfectly (with the honourable exception of Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet) and unless you know the play already, the action here is pretty hard to follow. Also, it's a bit strange seeing comic genius Alan Cumming in a straight role.

Ultimately though, the main joy of the movie is Dame Helen. She does bitterness superbly. I loved the scene when Miranda first meets Ferdinand - Mirren's ironic commentary added a whole new dimension to the play for me.

I also loved Tony Conti as the aged senator Gonzalo. His performance is so masterful it puts his character at the forefront of the story for once - no bad thing.

Overall I think Shakespeare fans will really enjoy this film. Other people may be left a little bored and bewildered.

Recently, I watched, and loved, the seven BBC adaptations of Shakespeare's plays about the Wars of the Roses. By contrast, this film of 'The Tempest' is poor fayre. Partly it's because of actors who seem ill-equipped for speaking Shakespearian lines: Russell Brand is the most obvious target, though the truth is that several cast members seems almost equally bad (Helen Mirren, though, and Alfred Mollina, are predictably good). Perhaps it's because of the film's arbitrary and inconsistent use of special effects and it's back-and-forwards transitioning between Tudor orthodoxy and a more modern staging: both approaches can work with Shakespeare, but this one just seems a mess. But maybe the bard too deserves some stick: there are some famous lines ("Oh brave new world, that has such people in it!") but the plot is pretty simple: Prospero (or, in this re-gendered version, Prospera) gets her revenge on her enemies through the deployment of supernatural devices: her hapless foes never stand a chance. Shakespeare's customary tendency to punch down with his humour is also on display: for all his literary brilliance, a lot of Shakespearian comedy takes the form of, in effect, chav jokes. Maybe there's something more in the script that got lost in adaptation. But this really isn't the bard at his best.