As usual in her films, these sometimes amplify themes and emotions nicely and sometimes degenerate into cliché. ![]() Just about everyone else plays second fiddle to the costumes and set design that are Taymor’s trademark. Either way, what makes her performance memorable is not the novelty of her gender, but the greatness of her soul, as she rides Prospera’s outsized emotions like a champion jockey to a moving finish. Mirren’s Prospera may project a more nurturing love than usual for Miranda and Ariel, but then maybe it’s we who are doing the projecting there, reading maternal love as more tender than paternal. Changing Prospero’s gender changes surprisingly little else, other than a few pronouns and the vowel at the end of the name. The anchor to this Tempest is Helen Mirren’s titanic performance as Prospera. But the language is almost always rendered faithfully and delivered clearly and well for the rest of the film, and the colors and sounds Taymor wraps around Shakespeare’s dialogue add more than they detract. The opening scene is a bad omen: The roar of the waves and the fire on the king’s sinking ship drown out most of Shakespeare’s words. Shakespeare always played to the cheap seats as well as the intelligentsia, and Julie Taymor’s production picks up on his populism, dialing the romance, buffoonery, sorcery, and soulful suffering up to 11. ![]() Yes, it's a little long and disjointed and it works a little too hard at being different (there's even a curtain call at the end of the film), but it never fails to hold the attention of those who like something a little different in their filmgoing.Julie Taymor’s The Tempest is Shakespeare for Dummies-but I mean that in a good way, for the most part. This film is sad and tragic and funny and intense. Julia stops the show in one scene dancing with a flock of sheep accompanied by Liza Minnelli singing "New York, New York". Ringwald shines in her film debut and there is a scene-stealing performance by the late Raul Julia as Kalibanos, Cassavettes' manservant on the island. Cassavettes is surrounded by a first rate cast.his scenes with Rowlands crackle with intensity and his surprising chemistry with Sarandon is a stark contrast to his scenes with Rowlands. Even though Paul Mazursky is credited as director, Cassavettes hand is all over this film.the long scenes filmed without cutting, the improvisatory feel to the dialogue., the self-indulgent storytelling style, this is definitely his show from beginning to end, and if you're not a fan of his work, the film will seem laboriously long and dull but if you are a fan, there are rewards to be had. Loosely based on the Shakesperean play, TEMPEST follows an architect (the late John Cassavettes, in one of his best performances), bored with his work and his crumbling marriage (to real life spouse Gene Rowlads), who decides to chuck it all, say the hell with the rat race and go live on an island with his daughter (Molly Ringwald, in her film debut), and new girlfriend Aretha (a luminous Susan Sarandon). For many years I thought I was the only person on the planet who had seen TEMPEST, and I am so glad to learn that I am not the only person who discovered this sleeper somewhere in their movie-going travails.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |