FILM REVIEW of Shakespeare's THE TEMPEST
10 Dec'10

JOHN COULBOURN - QMI Agency
Rating: 3.5 out of 5

In adapting Shakespeare's THE TEMPEST to the screen, American director Julie Taymor embraces a very British notion of moderation in all things. And she gives us a Tempest that is entrancing, although sometimes only moderately so. In a world often dominated by special effects, however, Taymor relies less on the magic of modern technology to attract attention than one might expect, relying instead on the power of casting.

Right off the top, she earns top marks by recasting Prospero, the dethroned Duke of Milan as Prospera, the dethroned Duchess, beautifully played here by Helen Mirren, heretofore better known to royal watchers in the celluloid kingdom as THE QUEEN. For lovers of Shakespeare, it is a relatively painless operation, as these things go. In fact, the character's strange and challenging mix of love and hate, rage and forgiveness seems, in a world too full of strutting machismo, to sit more comfortably on the more reasonable female psyche than it ever did on the male.

Having recruited royalty for her leading role, Taymor then surrounds her with nobility drawn from both the film and the theatre world: Chris Cooper as her usurping brother, David Strathairn as King Alonso, Alan Cumming as his plotting brother and Tom Conti as the faithful Gonzalo. She also enlists Russell Brand as the foolish Trinculo, Alfred Molina as the drunken Stephano, the noble Djimon Hounsou as the earth-bound Caliban, a touchingly androgynous Ben Whishaw as the airy Ariel and, finally, Felicity Jones as her daughter Miranda and Reeve Carney as the love-struck Prince Ferdinand.

Taymor then simply trusts them all enough to simply let them do what they have been engaged to do, moving herself into the background, the better to maintain the sense of balance that anchors the production and proves to be one of its major strengths. Where other directors, best left nameless, have allowed the comedic antics of Trinculo and Stephano to overshadow the drama of the tale, Taymor keeps a firm hand, insisting the comedy these two generate support the story she is telling, without overshadowing it.

In the same way, while she embraces modern CGI technology to underscore the magic at the heart of the tale she is telling, she never allows the technology she uses to overshadow the humanity and the intelligence that sits at the very heart of this story -- except for some unfortunate and heavy-handed work in the storm scene that launches the tale. She even manages, in a thoughtful adaptation/abridgement, to balance the demands of Shakespeare's often glorious text with what would appear to be an increasingly limited attention span in modern moviegoers.

In the end, what Taymor, Mirren et al have given us is not exactly a TEMPEST for the ages. But in the balance struck between talent, traditional casting, technology and the tale at hand, it manages to stand firmly on its own two feet as a TEMPEST for today.