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.