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THE TEMPEST (JULIE TAYMOR) Send This Review to a Friend
In a misguided egotistical, overbearing exercise, director Julie Taymor has inundated Shakespeare’s play “The Tempest” with garish visuals and effects that undercut whatever is poetic in the original. At least nobody is flying over the audience.
I saw her bloated version at the 2010 New York Film Festival, and at a press conference she talked a good game, as if all the excess had meaning and excitement. Well, that’s her vision.
The only idea that is particularly interesting is the casting of Helen Mirren, here as Prospera instead of the male Prospero. Mirren is fabulous in whatever she does, and she provides the only shred of dignity and substance. I would enjoy seeing her do the role in a conventional production that paid more attention to Shakespeare than to Taymor.
This is another case of a director trying to put a misplaced individual stamp on a work of the Bard, but in a sense worse, because Taymor’s imagination is wilder than what most directors can summon. ATouchstone Pictures and Miramax Films release.
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