Fool

Produced as a part of PBS’ American Playhouse, an independent producer of high-quality television films for first-time filmmakers, Fool’s Fire is something of Julie Taymor’s entire career in microcosm. There’s an obsession with using puppetry and masks, the ostentatious imagery, the general sense of artistry that borders on the pretentious and imaginative.  There’s also that bubbling sense of aggressive adaptations, a sense that everything must be included and played for maximum effect when something smaller would clearly do.

Based on the Edgar Allen Poe story “Hop-Frog,” with the poems “The Bells” and “A Dream Within a Dream” thrown in for good measure, Taymor uses eccentric techniques to create a work of abstract wonder. Sometimes Fool’s Fire is filled with too much wonder, and it tiptoes into esoteric territories of beautiful images and hypnotic costuming proving too much of a muchness. There can be such a thing as overly designing a film.

The basic story of “Hop-Frog” is followed very closely, with relatively little added or removed, including the horrifying denouement where the hero completes his transformation from victim to avenger. The choice to leave Michael J. Anderson and Mireille Mosse uncovered by masks or elaborate makeup and the rest of the players as asymmetrical puppets forces us into identification with them and their suffering. It’s a unique and creative choice, like many of Taymor’s, and it pays off well in the end.

Although other choices are slightly bewildering, like having Trippetta forced to live in a birdcage or having her recite “A Dream Within a Dream.” These moments feel like unnecessary distractions or too heavy-handed in the point Taymor is trying to make about prejudice. I doubt anyone would ever accuse Taymor of being prosaic, but sometimes dialing it back just a little will do wonders for the bigger moments. Fool’s Fire is perhaps too overstuffed with incident and imagery causing a strange cancellation effect, as the smaller moments feel too slumberous and the larger ones start feeling too theatrically synthetic. There’s a lot that’s tremendously good about Fool’s Fire, but it also presents the weaknesses of Taymor’s filmmaking style. In the end, Fool’s Fire is something of its creator’s brain exploding across the celluloid, and it is magnificent and convoluted to watch.