In her version of The Tempest, the William Shakespeare play that is approximately 400 years old, director Julie Taymor’s key change is an intuitive success: the exiled noble Prospero, a former ruler of Milan, is now Prospera, with the part played by Helen Mirren. The gender change allows for a subtlety of intent that traditional masculine interpretations don’t always attain. When Prospera, whose knowledge stretches into the realms of spirits and magic, lures her foes to her island home the idea of revenge is now informed by Mirren’s nuanced performance; her wrath can just as easily be perceived as munificence.
It also allows the interpretation which has shadowed the work for the last few decades – that the subjugation by Prospera and her teenage daughter, Miranda (Felicity Jones), of the isle’s original inhabitant, Caliban (Djimon Hounsou), can be seen a commentary of colonialism – to be relaxed. Caliban remains their servant, hoping to free himself, but Mirren defines her ruler by personal opinion rather than public policy. Prospera’s control of Caliban and the spirit Ariel (Ben Whishaw), who does her bidding, is a kind of salve, a sad echo of the entire realm she once commanded.
Taymor (Frida, Across the Universe) has always been liberal in her treatment of Shakespeare both for film and stage. Her screen adaptation of Titus Andronicus, as 1999’s Titus, was bloody and striking, but much of The Tempest remains tantalisingly out of her reach, just as reason does for Prospera’s visitors.
The plot is hard to separate from the episodic, as the host sets three stories in motion: the nobles Alonzo (David Strathairn), King of Naples, and her brother, Antonio (Chris Cooper), both of whom plotted against her, along with Gonzalo (Tom Conti) and Sebastian (Alan Cumming), are manipulated to show their weakness and venality; Alonzo’s son, Ferdinand (Reeve Carney), is put to work even as he falls in love with the innocent Miranda; while the servants Stephano (Alfred Molina) and Trinculo (Russell Brand) are left to plot with Caliban, who believes them gods sent to deliver him.
In an otherworldly realm of dark, rich blues and greens, where the landscape appears deliberately disconnected from one scene to the next (Taymor made use of Hawaii’s distinct volcanic surrounds, beaches and jungles), the story’s themes of control and freedom, of how the play’s magic is commentary on the theatre’s – or cinema’s – powers of illusion, are somewhat lost to the breadth of performances. Tone, and the measuring of it, may well be Taymor’s weakness. She indulges the fools who drunkenly imagine themselves potential rulers, with Molina and Brand overplaying their merriment (bottle in hand, Brand is more like the original Arthur than he was in his recent remake). Despite the keen strength of Mirren’s performance, the movie doesn’t hold together.
The digital effects that allow for hellhounds to be set onto the usurpers, or that present Ariel as a spectral wisp, are rarely intrusive, but like the busy, ineffectual score by the usually impressive Elliot Goldenthal, they don’t add anything conclusive. The Tempest has inspired numerous versions, as well as thematic offspring as diverse as the 1956 sci-fi classic Forbidden Planet and the television series Lost, but Julie Taymor’s variant is, of all things, benign. Shakespeare wrote of 'rough magic", but this is closer to fanciful and tame.
