Miranda Rights
Directed by Julie Taymor
Runtime: 110 min.
Theater whiz Julie Taymor cast Helen Mirren in her film version of Shakespeare’s The Tempest to
play Taymor—under the name Prospera, feminizing Shakespeare’s original
patriarch figure. This drastic error—a genuine act of hubris—raises
doubt about Taymor’s usually thoughtful, creative interpretations of
theater. Everything that makes Shakespeare’s final play a great
expression of the dangers and risks of ambition in Western civilization
is lost in this sex change.
The
play doesn’t really accommodate the different affinity that exists
between a mother and daughter (Miranda, played by Felicity Jones). And
leathery sexpot Mirren—Taymor’s vision of herself—speaks the King’s
English, yet she doesn’t enliven the text. Mirren lacks the stature to
force a genuine re-examination of the play, as would Vanessa Redgrave, a
commanding actress and theater legend. This makes Taymor’s The Tempest
seem
gimmicky. Her transition from the stage to the screen overuses CGI—a
literal-minded attempt at what Shakespeare terms “rough magic.” It’s
visually busy, yet weak—not a genuine cinematic creation as was Zack
Snyder’s Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole. Like Peter
Greenaway foundering with Prospero’s Books, it’s time Taymor give up her
viewfinder.
She gets her CGI money’s worth: Some
striking phantasms and apparitions do occur—a hermaphroditic Ariel who
changes from wind to water, hellhounds with glowing teeth and eyes—but
Taymor also weighs down the film in extravagant real-life landscapes.
(Comic support from Alfred Molina and Russell Brand is also deadweight.)
She forgot what Ingmar Bergman proved when translating theaterto-film
in The Magic Flute: That The Tempest doesn’t need “reality,” it needs theatrical illusion, stylization—not F/X.
Taymor’s
best effect was casting Djimon Hounsou as Prospera’s mutant minion
Caliban, evoking Western Civ’s history of African enslavement and
oppressed-person anxiety. Hounsou isn’t merely aggrieved; he
physicalizes an anguished spirit, conscious and fighting against the
West’s original sin. This is, fittingly, his greatest role since
portraying Cinque in Spielberg’s Amistad. Costumed so that his
skin is part earth, Hounsou turns a usually unplayable part into an
original creation. It’s the only time Taymor’s modern re-thinking of
Shakespeare challenges political correctness and really works.