Rating: ½ 

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  USA/India/UK. 2010. Director/Screenplay – Julie Taymor, Based on the Play by William Shakespeare, Producers – Robert Chartoff, Lynn Hendee, Jason K. Lau, Julia Taylor-Stanley & Julie Taymor, Photography – Stuart Dryburgh, Music – Elliot Goldenthal, Visual Effects Supervisor – Kyle Cooper, Visual Effects – Prologue Films (Supervisor – Kyle Cooper, Animation Supervisors – Heebok Lee & Adam Swaab), Special Effects Supervisors – Steve Kirshoff & G. Bruno Stemple, Caliban Makeup – Matthew W. Mungle & Richard Redlefsen, Production Design – Mark Friedberg. Production Company – Miranda Films/Talkstory Productions/Artemis Films/Mumbai Mantra Media Limited/Prologue Films/Chartoff-Hendee Productions. Cast: Helen Mirren (Prospera), Ben Whishaw (Ariel), Djimon Hounsou (Caliban), Russell Brand (Trinculo), Alfred Molina (Stephano), Felicity Jones (Miranda), Reeve Carney (Prince Ferdinand), David Strathairn (King Alonso), Tom Conti (Gonzalo), Alan Cumming (Sebastian), Chris Cooper (Antonio)  

There have been a number of versions of The Tempest on screen before – from Derek Jarman’s moodily eccentric The Tempest (1979) to Paul Mazursky’s modernised Tempest (1982), Peter Greenaway’s madcap work of arthouse surrealism Prospero’s Books (1991) and the made for American tv The Tempest (1998), which updated the story into the American Civil War, not to mention Forbidden Planet (1956), which retold the story in science-fictional terms. Julie Taymor’s take is to give us a version that features a female Prospero in the form of Helen Mirren. Other than the casting of Helen Mirren – which I am not sure necessarily adds any fascinatingly new interpretations to the original – Julie Taymor’s The Tempest otherwise keeps to the basics and gives a traditional telling of the play the way that Shakespeare wrote it with all the dialogue taken in toto.

One thing that Julie Taymor does give the play is to open it up visually. The Tempest is the most fantastic of William Shakespeare’s plays – alongside A Midsummer Night’s Dream (c1595) – and Julie Taymor gives us the most visually alive screen version yet. She is a director noted for the vibrance of the visuals she conjures – both on stage and on the screen. Where film versions of The Tempest (and other Shakespearean works) tend to allow the camera to simply film a stage play enacted on sets and in costumes, Taymor makes the dialogue come to life dramatically. She employs an extravagant range of visual effects to give us scenes of Helen Mirren whipping up the storm to destroy the Milanese sailing ship, or of the ghostly Ariel flitting about, materialising out of trees. There is a particularly beautiful sequence where Ben Whishaw’s Ariel becomes a water sprite and follows the party along under the rivers and pools, while singing a hauntingly beautiful song. There are amazing visions – the party of nobles being greeted by the vision of a path of magical steps leading to a laden banquet table in glowing lights, before Ariel appears as a hermaphoritic black crow being and wields a storm cloud of birds against them; or his appearance as a horde of flaming dogs to pursue them. Taymor even sweeps Miranda and Ferdinand up into a cosmological vision of star charts and astrological symbols.

One of the more interesting things is how, having set the film up, Julie Taymor otherwise leaves the island a bare landscape (filmed around the volcanic islands of Hawaii). This does lead to a film that is oddly extravagant visually but equally seems to take place almost entirely out of doors, apart from Prospera’s courtyard near the end. Even Prospera’s wardrobe of costumes is peculiarly located out of doors. The staging of some scenes is also downright peculiar – like one where Djimon Hounsou’s Caliban is fooling around with Russell Brand’s Trinculo, which ends with both of them hiding under a blanket in the midst of an otherwise barren plain. One thing that must be commended hugely in Julie Taymor’s favour is that she opens the dialogue itself up. Watching Shakespeare film adaptations, unless you have memorised or are closely familiar with the text, you often need a set of primer notes to interpret and follow what is being said. Rather than people coming on a delivering dialogue by memorised rote as you usually get, Julie Taymor has her actors deliver it as though it were everyday dialogue, which certainly makes the play easier to follow.