The Tempest (2010)

Perfect cast and a good story

One of my all time favorites.

Absolutely the worst movie.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

"...like the baseless fabric of this vision, the cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces, the solemn temples, the great globe itself ... 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." What actor or actress wouldn't give their eye teeth to deliver those lines? No other writer in the English language can conjure up such transcendently strong, evocative language. The Tempest was the last play that Shakespeare wrote entirely by himself, and it's hard to avoid the feeling that this was the master's farewell flourish. If you haven't seen this movie, it's absolutely worth it. Ignore the negative posts; I have no idea what their problem is. I rate this as among the best Shakespeare adaptations specifically for the screen, along with Zeffirelli's "Romeo and Juliet" and Branagh's "Much Ado About Nothing" and a very few others. When this movie was released there was predictably a minor flap about the central character of the old magician/sage Prospero (here, Prospera) being played by a woman. But it turns out to be no problem at all; with some extremely small adjustments to the text, everything works just fine, including the parent/child relationship (Prospera/Miranda) which is now mother/daughter. And Helen Mirren, one of our greatest living actresses, sells it. Converting Shakespeare to film carries both advantages and risks, but one advantage is an extra dimension of nuance: with effective use of close-ups the actors can act with subtle facial expressions as well as with dialog and body language. And Mirren does this very effectively indeed -- watch her face carefully in every one of her scenes. This movie also doesn't shy away from the full text; it's delivered clearly and for anyone not so familiar with Shakespeare's wording this is as good a place to start as any. Another advantage of film is the ability to use special effects, which this movie uses especially for the airy spirit Ariel (an excellent Ben Whishaw) and for the final "vision" sequence. These work well, they add to the overall feel of the play, and (avoiding the risk) they're not overdone. Compared with other Shakespeare plays the list of characters is relatively small, and although there's no doubt this is Helen Mirren's film, the rest of the cast is uniformly good. Felicity Jones is a really nice and convincing Miranda, Djimon Hounsou gives a strongly portrayed version of the conflicted Caliban, and the shipwrecked nobles (David Strathairn, Alan Cumming, Chris Cooper, Reeve Carney, Tom Conti) are uniformly good. The biggest problem area with The Tempest (as a play) is with the "fools" (the comic relief, here played by Alfred Molina and Russell Brand): relative to other plays they just aren't that funny and they seem to be just a distraction to the main story, but to their credit Molina and Brand pull off just about the best versions of them that I've seen.Kudos to director Julie Taymor for giving us this. She's someone with genuine vision and is no stranger to Shakespeare either -- see her eccentrically powerful version of Titus Andronicus ("Titus" 1999, with Anthony Hopkins) as one other example.

I am not a fan of male characters in Shakespeare being played by women, although it is only fair when you remember that when first written, all parts were played by men. However, I thought Helen Mirren did a brilliant and believable piece of work. At least the text had been adapted to reinforce the fact that she was female and we weren't expected to believe that she was Prospero and not Prospera. I thoroughly enjoyed this screen adaptation and although scenes that I looked forward to were cut out e.g., the Goddesses at the feast, the CGI was very clever. I thought that it was a mistake to make the casting of Caliban an African man, although he was disguised with scales and what looked like vertiligo. The purists see this play as about man's fear of anything different,(the other) and this plays into the post colonial criticisms by making the man black. Although Ben Wishaw did a sterling job as Ariel, it was a bit disconcerting to see his thin body running around naked. Especially at the beginning when he had to lie about with his leg discretely crossed in case he revealed anything he shouldn't. However, having acted in this play and seen several versions this was one of the best.

Julie Taymor (Frida, Titus) sets her sights on the Bard's final masterpiece, recasting Prospero as Prospera (Hellen Mirren) and letting the magic and romance loose in this very different take on The Tempest.First, what works? Hellen Mirren does, rather unsurprisingly, and the art direction of photography are consistent with the vision of the woman who gave us Titus back in 1999. Kudos as well to the ever-watchable David Strathairn and Djimon Hounsou.What annoys? Now we enter very subjective ground. This beautiful, deceptively simple play is turned into an amped up to the max, loud and frantic film. The electric guitar whines are painfully out of place, and Russell Brand, never guilty of subtlety on a good day, will make you claw your own eardrums out. It's almost as if Taymor had forgotten we were right there with her cast, right behind the camera, instead of sitting 50ft back in a packed theater.This has proved an incredibly divisive film, and I feel split right down the middle on it. I admire Titus, in my mind one of the best Shakespeare adaptations in history, but whereas Taymor's turbocharged visuals and loud, often trashy use of sound and effects served as a perfect illustration for Shakesepare's bonkers gore-fest, it diminishes the more mature, heartfelt qualities of this play. The Tempest is a great playwright's swan song, the work of an aging, mature artist. Why would you give us an overly loud, ADD-afflicted MTV version? Ultimately, this frustrating missed opportunity makes you wonder, did Taymor have her Shakespeare mixed up all along. Rather than give us "the stuff that dreams are made of", she serves us "a tale, told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing".

To give a review about any Shakespearian adaptation, we must begin with the faithfulness of the movie.This movie is completely faithful to the play and has all the major points of the plot. The dialogue is also Shakespearian and again faithful (except the parts that have to be changed because of "Prospera"). All in all, this movie conveys the spirit of Shakespeare's play.And I loved the comic scenes with Trinculo, "King" Stephano :D and Caliban. They really made me laugh in a scene when the third meets the first two.The only flaw is what all of us know. Why should Prospero become Prospera???!!! That is the question that can't be answered easily. That may be because the director is a woman and wants to show "Female Authority" (a term used frequently in Feminist texts). Because of this change of gender, some dialogues have to be changed too. And of course the mother/daughter relation is different from Father/daughter. That is, I believe, the only flaw in this movie (making my score 8 rather than 10).Other than this, everything is perfect.My Score: 8/10