| 'The Tempest': Shakespeare Rolls in His Grave By Kat Murphy, Special to MSN Movies
Bear with me while I preface my take on Julie Taymor's remarkably dumb and artless film
with some words about the poet who originally authored "The Tempest." Within its elegant narrative and
embroidered language, Shakespeare's last play roils with utopian visions,
sorcerer's magic, the fonts -- both dreamy and primal -- of artistic
inspiration. When all the adventures of exiles and shipwrecked folk on a faraway
island are done, Shakespeare meant for what's won or learned to be carried home,
to become the foundations of some brave new world located ... well, under the
audience's very own feet. Like "Lost," only smarter.
Watch FilmFan
Related: More on William Shakespeare
Think of Shakespeare as Prospero -- or in Taymor's film, Prospera (Helen Mirren) -- theatrical
wizard/scientist/dreamer. The enchanted island where the inconvenient duchess
with special powers has been exiled by her corrupt brother mirrors Shakespeare's
"little O," the theater in the round where, mage-like, the playwright conjured
up witches and ghosts, murderous kings, nightmares of good men gone mad and base
mortals scrabbling for power and occasional visions of order and harmony. And
when the curtain fell, every groundling sensed the fragility of life itself:
Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all
spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless
fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit,
shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a
rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
Such poetry might exorcize even "Inception"'s nightmares. In contrast to
Shakespeare's gift for weaving words into enchanted worlds, Taymor's "Tempest"
leeches most of the magic out of his language and Prospera's fertile island of
the imagination. Instead of an organic unfolding, the compressed tale jitters
from scene to scene, sans the connecting tissue of logic or dramatic event. All
the good stuff, all the big emotions, seem to have occurred offstage, before the
film began, and so nothing really happens. If it seems something lively-like's
afoot, that's soon scotched by Prospera, who shuts things down like a right
proper schoolmarm.
If ever this Prospera swelled with rage at having her city and rank stolen
from her by her covetous brother Antonio (Chris Cooper), she's over it now. By the time this
laid-back lady calls up a storm to shipwreck him on her island -- along with the
King of Naples (David Strathairn), his fratricidal brother (Alan Cumming) and innocent son -- she hardly even
acknowledges Antonio as a major player; her forgiveness comes almost as an
aside.
Just as perfunctory is Prospera's stagecraft in putting her daughter in the
way of the king's heir (Reeve Carney), a boychick so tender he looks
permanently stoned. He's the perfect Adam for empty-headed, charmingly
buck-toothed Miranda (Felicity Jones), pure child of nature, unsullied
by the company of men, cute as a Miley Cyrus wannabe. If these two
goops are the best Prospera/Taymor can come up with for their brave new world,
then woe is us.
Taymor shorthands any creative dialectic Prospera's servants Ariel and
Caliban represent, since she's totally domesticated the witch's dreamwork.
Incorporeal Ariel (Ben Whishaw) flits about at his mistress'
shoulder, happy to do her bidding, trusting she'll set him free one of these
fine days. He arranges for the high-born survivors to wander interminably --
allowing time for a plot against the king's life to get hatched -- while the
low-born Trinculo and Stephano slapstick their way along a separate path. When
Caliban (Djimon Hounsou), dirtbag son of a nasty witch,
runs into them, the base spirit is immediately convinced that the two stumbling
drunks (Russell Brand, Alfred Molina) are gods. Surely they can kill Prospera
and deliver the lovely Miranda into his lustful embrace. High or low, those
Italians are a perfidious lot.
Taymor turned Shakespeare's "Titus Andronicus" into an architecturally insane
orgy of sex and blood, grotesque revenge and nihilism. Whatever you thought of
the result, you had to admire the director's unrelenting vision, a knife with
which she never hesitated to cut out the still-beating hearts and souls of her
characters. Good on her, I thought, when she switched Prospero's gender, making
him a thinking woman fleeing a stake reserved for witches. And who better to
play sorcerer than Helen Mirren, the wild enchantress Morgana in John Boorman's "Excalibur"?
Boorman has always believed wholeheartedly in magic; "Excalibur" posits a
Merlin who, like Prospera, shapes events, but he's sometimes surprised and
ultimately undone by magic that percolates outside his spells. Morgana, his
nemesis, harbors such hunger for revenge that she burns down Arthur's dream of a
brave new world. There's not a moment in "Excalibur" that you aren't ensorcelled
by glamour'd witch and wizard. And nothing remotely as hot as their passion
takes fire in "The Tempest."
What would today's groundling -- some kid with "Harry Potter and the Deathly
Hallows" and World of Warcraft under his/her belt -- see in Taymor's bloodless
allegory about a wimpy witch and her sappy daughter? You want the real thing --
art, mortality, the power of magic and the imagination? Let yourself go with
"Excalibur." Shakespeare would approve.
Kathleen Murphy once had the pleasure of writing a book-length comparison
of Howard Hawks and Ernest Hemingway, friends and fellow travelers in fiction
(Quentin Tarantino reckoned it "cool.") She's reviewed movies
in newspapers and magazines (Movietone News, Film Comment, Village Voice, Film
West, Steadycam) and on websites (Reel.com, Cinemania.com, Amazon.com). Her
writing has been included in book anthologies ("Women and Cinema," "The Myth of
the West," "Best American Movie Writing 1998"). During her checkered career,
Kathleen's done everything from writing speeches for Bill Clinton, Jack
Lemmon, Harrison Ford, et al., to researching
torture-porn movies for a law firm. She adores Bigelow, Breillat and Denis --
and arguing about movies in any and all arenas.
Bear with me while I preface my take on Julie Taymor's remarkably dumb and artless film
with some words about the poet who originally authored "The Tempest." Within its elegant narrative and
embroidered language, Shakespeare's last play roils with utopian visions,
sorcerer's magic, the fonts -- both dreamy and primal -- of artistic
inspiration. When all the adventures of exiles and shipwrecked folk on a faraway
island are done, Shakespeare meant for what's won or learned to be carried home,
to become the foundations of some brave new world located ... well, under the
audience's very own feet. Like "Lost," only smarter.
Watch FilmFan
Related: More on William Shakespeare
Think of Shakespeare as Prospero -- or in Taymor's film, Prospera (Helen Mirren) -- theatrical
wizard/scientist/dreamer. The enchanted island where the inconvenient duchess
with special powers has been exiled by her corrupt brother mirrors Shakespeare's
"little O," the theater in the round where, mage-like, the playwright conjured
up witches and ghosts, murderous kings, nightmares of good men gone mad and base
mortals scrabbling for power and occasional visions of order and harmony. And
when the curtain fell, every groundling sensed the fragility of life itself:
Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all
spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless
fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit,
shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a
rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
Such poetry might exorcize even "Inception"'s nightmares. In contrast to
Shakespeare's gift for weaving words into enchanted worlds, Taymor's "Tempest"
leeches most of the magic out of his language and Prospera's fertile island of
the imagination. Instead of an organic unfolding, the compressed tale jitters
from scene to scene, sans the connecting tissue of logic or dramatic event. All
the good stuff, all the big emotions, seem to have occurred offstage, before the
film began, and so nothing really happens. If it seems something lively-like's
afoot, that's soon scotched by Prospera, who shuts things down like a right
proper schoolmarm.
If ever this Prospera swelled with rage at having her city and rank stolen
from her by her covetous brother Antonio (Chris Cooper), she's over it now. By the time this
laid-back lady calls up a storm to shipwreck him on her island -- along with the
King of Naples (David Strathairn), his fratricidal brother (Alan Cumming) and innocent son -- she hardly even
acknowledges Antonio as a major player; her forgiveness comes almost as an
aside.
Just as perfunctory is Prospera's stagecraft in putting her daughter in the
way of the king's heir (Reeve Carney), a boychick so tender he looks
permanently stoned. He's the perfect Adam for empty-headed, charmingly
buck-toothed Miranda (Felicity Jones), pure child of nature, unsullied
by the company of men, cute as a Miley Cyrus wannabe. If these two
goops are the best Prospera/Taymor can come up with for their brave new world,
then woe is us.
Taymor shorthands any creative dialectic Prospera's servants Ariel and
Caliban represent, since she's totally domesticated the witch's dreamwork.
Incorporeal Ariel (Ben Whishaw) flits about at his mistress'
shoulder, happy to do her bidding, trusting she'll set him free one of these
fine days. He arranges for the high-born survivors to wander interminably --
allowing time for a plot against the king's life to get hatched -- while the
low-born Trinculo and Stephano slapstick their way along a separate path. When
Caliban (Djimon Hounsou), dirtbag son of a nasty witch,
runs into them, the base spirit is immediately convinced that the two stumbling
drunks (Russell Brand, Alfred Molina) are gods. Surely they can kill Prospera
and deliver the lovely Miranda into his lustful embrace. High or low, those
Italians are a perfidious lot.
Taymor turned Shakespeare's "Titus Andronicus" into an architecturally insane
orgy of sex and blood, grotesque revenge and nihilism. Whatever you thought of
the result, you had to admire the director's unrelenting vision, a knife with
which she never hesitated to cut out the still-beating hearts and souls of her
characters. Good on her, I thought, when she switched Prospero's gender, making
him a thinking woman fleeing a stake reserved for witches. And who better to
play sorcerer than Helen Mirren, the wild enchantress Morgana in John Boorman's "Excalibur"?
Boorman has always believed wholeheartedly in magic; "Excalibur" posits a
Merlin who, like Prospera, shapes events, but he's sometimes surprised and
ultimately undone by magic that percolates outside his spells. Morgana, his
nemesis, harbors such hunger for revenge that she burns down Arthur's dream of a
brave new world. There's not a moment in "Excalibur" that you aren't ensorcelled
by glamour'd witch and wizard. And nothing remotely as hot as their passion
takes fire in "The Tempest."
What would today's groundling -- some kid with "Harry Potter and the Deathly
Hallows" and World of Warcraft under his/her belt -- see in Taymor's bloodless
allegory about a wimpy witch and her sappy daughter? You want the real thing --
art, mortality, the power of magic and the imagination? Let yourself go with
"Excalibur." Shakespeare would approve.
Kathleen Murphy once had the pleasure of writing a book-length comparison
of Howard Hawks and Ernest Hemingway, friends and fellow travelers in fiction
(Quentin Tarantino reckoned it "cool.") She's reviewed movies
in newspapers and magazines (Movietone News, Film Comment, Village Voice, Film
West, Steadycam) and on websites (Reel.com, Cinemania.com, Amazon.com). Her
writing has been included in book anthologies ("Women and Cinema," "The Myth of
the West," "Best American Movie Writing 1998"). During her checkered career,
Kathleen's done everything from writing speeches for Bill Clinton, Jack
Lemmon, Harrison Ford, et al., to researching
torture-porn movies for a law firm. She adores Bigelow, Breillat and Denis --
and arguing about movies in any and all arenas. | |
