The Tempest

source: The Tempest

A wonderful version of The Tempest. The atmosphere mkes it striking. The ragged old dark palace where it's set. The gothic punk acting. The excitement, drama, and passion it adds to the play. It brings out the mythical and magical side in a playful way, with a dark gothic flavour. Those expecting a costume drama and Shakespeare play in theatre wan't like it. They won't see the humour and drama. Those who remember the seventies will love its hilarious festive playfullness.

This film version of Shakespeare's play opens on an island where Prospero and his daughter Miranda have been exiled for many years along with their servant Caliban and a spirit called Ariel. Prospero is rightfully the Duke of Milan and a powerful sorcerer and while he sleeps a storm at sea wrecks a ship near the island. Aboard are the men he blames for his exile; including the King of Naples and his son Ferdinand. Ferdinand is separated from the others and captured by Prospero and accused of being a spy; Miranda vouches for him and gradually falls in love with him. Meanwhile others survivors plot against their king and Caliban plans to kill Prospero, who he claims stole the island from him. This is the only version of 'The Tempest' that I've seen so I can't say how good an adaption it is; I can however say that it won't be for everybody. It is a bit confusing at first then as things are explained things start to make sense and finally as it ends one is left wondering how much of what we've seen was meant to be real and how much was meant to be the creation of a deranged mind! The film sometimes feels more like a TV play than a film; although I don't imagine a TV play made in the '70s would feature as much nudity. The cast do a solid job; I particularly liked Toyah Wilcox's portrayal of a punkish Miranda and Jack Birkett's disturbing performance as Caliban. Overall I'd say viewers some will love it some will hate it… give it a go and decide for yourself.

"Speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounc'd it to you, trippingly on the tongue; but if you mouth it, as many of our players do, I had as lief the town-crier spoke my lines." Those are the directions that Hamlet gives the players on how to perform the Mousetrap. While the rhythms of Elizabethan English are difficult for Americans, they seems to come naturally for British actors, and those here perform it well enough. The problems with this production arise, as they often do for THE TEMPEST, from the director's efforts to make it visually striking. Because of the magic that lies at the heart of Shakespeare's autumnal work, its gorgeous language has fallen prey to people who think the best way to stage it is to think what Quentin Crisp would sneer at as too camp and turn it up a couple of notches. One Shakespeare in the Park staging required a dozen people to play Ariel, including a Sumo wrestler; and Peter Greenaway's gloss on the play, PROSPERO'S BOOK, is so bad that when I saw it with some friends, I disrupted the occasion by guffawing at the over-the-top images. They show up here, too. What all these geniuses fail to realize is that the play is a boy-meets-girl story, something Shakespeare wrote several dozen times. At its core is a coming-of-age story for Miranda, an adolescent girl who is old enough to leave her father. She is confronted by various male archetypes before settling on the only boy her own age. The Bard of Avon's message is so normal, that like should marry like, that youth calls to youth and that Show Business is the process of taking these ordinary and important stories and making us pay for them by wrapping them in mystery ... well, so normal that people miss the point. The play's real magic is the story of Rapunzel and Snow White and all the other fairy tales which Bruno Bettelheim has shredded to show their symbolic content. That and the language. These should be enough for anyone like me, who cares for these things. It's too bad that the people who produced this version either don't care about Shakespeare or think that no normal person will.

Into this primordial mix, add some seventeenth century magic, and you have Shakespeare's "The Tempest", a play whose themes are: freedom, temperance, repentance, and forgiveness. The main difference between Shakespeare's play and Derek Jarman's film is, of course, the nearly four hundred years of change in theatrics that separate the two artists. Jarman's version tries to adhere to the play, in that the film uses quasi-Elizabethan linguistics, which renders the dialogue difficult to understand. The play's intent is still intact in the film, if a little obscured by the language, and is conveyed mostly through the acting and the cinematography, though "adapted" in style to a more contemporary audience. Hence, the film's inventive finale features a vocal rendition of "Stormy Weather", a modern metaphor for a message that spans the ages. Even with the updated visuals, this film is going to be a bit much for most viewers. It is just too out of sync with what modern audiences expect. On the other hand, for those few who appreciate Shakespeare, the film can be insightful, with the proviso that it is not "pure" (or literal) Shakespeare.

I thought this was very "different" compared to most modern interpretations of Shakespeare and enjoyed it thoroughly. It would not be useful for those studying it at school etc. as it does not show the traditional Shakespeare character interpretations (i.e- Miranda is portrayed quite punky compared to your traditional Shakespeare lady) but for understanding of the play and for the basis of the story it is a very strong piece and fantastic to watch. It does not include also the correct format, as in the layout of acts and scenes as I am currently playing Miranda in a production and most of her lines had been cut and some scenes split and mixed around but it is very useful and I would definitely recommend it as a must-see even if just to say you've seen it! Shakespeare fans would love this!

I'm amazed that of all the reviews I've looked at nobody seems to have noticed one of the main points of this film, or at least how I saw it. It seems like one big homosexual fantasy, camp clothing, a glorified * Ferdinand, a definite sexual tension between Ariel and Prospero, and as a final climax, a group of men in tight sailor suits dancing the hornpipe. This whole approach, once you get used to it, provides you with all sorts of fantastic scenes and images. The sight of an innocent Ariel being pulled towards a disgusting * Sycorax in order to perform "her earthy and abhorr'd commands", is one of the darkest I've ever scene in a Shakespeare film. However by the end of the film I'd grown tired of the style and the final hornpipe dance was just too much to take. Still overall its an interesting interpretation of the play.

Derek Jarman's retelling of Shakespeare's "The Tempest". I never read the play or saw any version of it so I was a little confused about what was going on. It's something about a man named Prospero who's exiled to an island with his daughter Miranda, a REAL annoying slave and an angel (I think) named Ariel. His brother and the king did it to him (I'm not sure why) so Ariel fixes it that the king's son Ferdinand is shipwrecked on the island, becomes a slave of Prospero and falls in love with Miranda. This is NOT a faithful retelling of the play. There's plenty of frontal male nudity--actor David Meyer (playing Ferdinand) is introduced completely * for a lengthy time--and there are strange costumes, noises and settings all mixed with Shakespeare's dialogue! And the wedding has sailors doing a homoerotic dance AND posing afterwards. Then there's a woman all dressed up and lip-syncing (badly) to "Stormy Weather"...I honestly can't say I liked it but the acting is good and it's definitely the strangest Shakespeare adaptation I've ever seen. Jarman did another one like this years later--"Edward II"--which was better than this. Still this is a one of a kind and not without merit.

I have read all of Shakespeare's plays, seen productions of a majority of them and even acted in and directed some. I do not necessarily believe that Shakespeare must be done in the "traditional" fashion, but I hated this movie. There is nudity that is gratuitous and unnecessary. There is grotesqueness that is far beyond what I believe Shakespeare intended. Some of the dialogue is incomprehensible, and there are those elements, like the singing and dancing that add no meaning to the movie, but replace Shakespeare with the director's self-indulgences. I am sorry to say that I wasted perfectly good money to buy the DVD of this movie.

I was loaned this DVD by the director of a film I am working with, in which I play an actor who is playing Prospero. Knowing his own style, I did not expect anything resembling a "classical" interpretation of the text. What I have found is sometimes striking, sometimes evocative, but often meandering and tedious. Like most experimental music, I find that in films such as this, the building blocks of powerful film-making are crafted, even if they have not found their most useful form in a more coherent format. Thus we have a Caliban who is more a clown than a threat, and who not even Miranda seems terribly afraid of (which is odd, since we know that he has attempted to rape her at least once). A Stefano and Trinculo who are more annoying than funny. An oddly young Prospero who looks like Amadeus. And a great loss of character development and plot through creative editing and highly stylized posturing. Interestingly enough, I do not have an issue with the way in which Ferdanand or Miranda are portrayed. His stunned rapture and her slightly freaky innocence are actually quite appropriate. I do not say that this is a bad film, but an experimental one. One that takes huge risks, but is meant more for students of art and film and not really for anyone with an interest in the Tempest for its own sake.