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The Tempest review
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The Tempest

“We are such stuff as dreams are made on/And our little life is rounded with a sleep.”

 

Julie Taymor’s reading of The Tempest is heavy on the dreams, but light on the second half’s understanding of eventual surrender and quietness. The Tempest is an elegy and a humbling, and the play is one of the richest in both characters and visuals in William Shakespeare’s canon. It’s a damn shame then that Taymor took so much of it literal, fails to modulate her admittedly fervent imagination, and seems completely at odds with the poetic acceptance of mortality.

 

Taymor’s The Tempest doesn’t just fail to go quietly into the dying light, it doesn’t just rage against it, but goes completely unhinged at every opportunity. Credit must be given for the boldness of her vision, commitment to seeing it through, and moments of grand beauty, but they cannot smooth over the numerous problems of tone and performance. The same problems that plagued Titus plague this Shakespearean run-through, but the major difference is that Titus could contain a persistent tone of extremity much better than this golden sunset.

 

Sometimes less is really more, and a little bit less of Taymor’s incessant visualizations would go a long way towards taming this thing. Frenzied is the best descriptor of it. Maybe on stage this exact production would work better, but the intimacy of the camera makes the grandiosities assaulting and overbearing to so delicate a work. Even worse is how often the special effects work looks half-finished or just downright terrible. Several instances of rear projection are clearly artificial, and CGI hellhounds are just embarrassingly terrible.

 

Then there’s the curious case of Ariel in this production. Ariel is a sprite, and Taymor’s decision to paint Ben Whishaw ghostly white and make him translucent and consistently leaving a ghostly trail behind his movement is beautiful. The choice to have Whishaw naked and prone to developing breasts and long hair at random moments is just…well, a bit overheated, like so much of the film. Yet Whishaw’s performance is magical, ethereal, and tender in equal measure. He’s wise to underplay so much of the part and makes smart choices about where and when to go big, like a scene where Ariel appears as a terrifying harpy.

 

There’s also the unique and smart choice to cast Caliban as a symbol of colonialism’s horrific stain, but Djimon Hounsou never gets the chance to invest tragedy into the part. Taymor sets up a smart idea for Caliban, then does nothing with it and leaves him playing second-fiddle to the two clowns of the piece. Those clowns are played by Alfred Molina, great as always, and Russell Brand, who is surprisingly effective with the language and holds his own in a fairly strong company of actors.

 

But Hounsou isn’t the only fine actor giving an awkward performance here. Chris Cooper just wasn’t made for Shakespeare I suppose, or perhaps he just wasn’t made for this particular part. Meanwhile, David Strathairn, Tom Conti, Alan Cumming, and Felicity Jones are doing their best with limited screen-time or limited acting partners. The long absences of Strathairn, Cumming, and Conti are practically criminal. Jones’ love scenes with Reeve Carney are limp things primarily because Carney is achingly beautiful to look at, but completely miscast for Shakespeare given how awkwardly he handles what little dialog they left for him to recite.

 

As any adaptation of The Tempest is meant to do, Helen Mirren dominates this one in the gender-swapped role of Prospera. Surprisingly, very little changes to the source material by flipping the central role around this way, but Mirren gives a knockout of a performance. Of course, Mirren acing Shakespeare is a given, but she plays a full range of emotions here with commitment and tenderness. Her relationship with Ariel is richer here, as Mirren treats Ariel more as a companion and less as a servant. She nurtures the part and rides it into the big finish with a soulful demonstration and a smashing of her magical scepter.

 

The Tempest is a garden of good ideas without someone to nurture them into blossoming. Too many images and costuming call attention to themselves, too many choices make promises that the film cannot keep. There’s some lovely performances, a couple of tremendously exciting visual stimuli, and a lot of aiming for the highest peak even when a moment doesn’t require it.   

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Added by JxSxPx
7 years ago on 31 December 2016 02:19