Tempest in a Taymore

When I saw that we’d only watched three or four Shakespearean movies in 2017, I decided we should step up our game and brush up on our Shakespeare. First pick, Julie Taymor’s The Tempest (2010), starring Helen Mirren as gender-swapped Prospera.

It begins with a tempest - Prospera sends Ariel (Ben Whishaw) to wreck the ship that carries her enemies, but to make sure no one is harmed. I thought this nicely illustrated the fearsome strength of the wizard Prospera. She also bears down pretty hard on Ariel, showing her capacity for cruelty. She shows her daughter Miranda (Felicity Jones) a much kinder side.

So the passengers land safely - Prospera’s usurper brother, his henchman, the King of Milan, and kindly old Gonzalo (Tom Conti), in one party, the Prince (Reeve Carney) all alone in another part of the island. Meanwhile, Trinculo (Russell Brand), a fool, and Stephano (Alfred Molina), a drunk, land somewhere else. The clownish pair meet up with Caliban (Djimon Hounsou), a native of the island, who declares them to be gods when he tries their liquor.

And so it goes until Prospera wraps it all up, telling them that the “actors were all spirits and they’ve all melted into air.” So, although she wields mighty powers, she only used them for a series of practical jokes. She even sets Ariel free. Caliban not so much, although it looks like she will at least be leaving him alone.

The text is truncated quite a bit, which leads to the problem of cleaned up colloquial dialog clanging against something more “Shakespearean”. That didn’t bother me much. In fact, very little about this bothered me. It has interesting music (both score and the songs, like Full Fathom Five), fantastic staging, special effects that are really special (without being showy), fine acting. Some people might be put off by Russell Brand’s style of clowning, but I thought it was fine - the clown in these modern presentations is always interesting, and usually somehow modernized.

I’ve decided that The Tempest is now my favorite Shakespearean play - although that’s mainly based on this and Prospero’s Books. I guess neither is very true to the original, but I don’t care. I thought this conveyed very well both Prospera’s power and majesty, and that she was just kidding all along.

The problems of slavery (Ariel) and colonialism (Caliban) are not addressed, which could be a deficit, although it wouldn’t make sense to add this as a side plot. It would need to be the focus. Yet, it can be hard to keep to the viewpoint of the times.

Still, my favorite Shakespeare.