The Tempest (2010)

Let me say right off: I am a total Bardolator. I teach Shakespeare, I am obsessed with Shakespeare, I have read and seen all the plays, and my love affair with the Bard began with seeing a live performance of The Tempest in 1975. It was pure magic. I also love movies, and I believe that in the 21st century, filmed versions of Shakespeare's plays are probably the best way to reach the widest audience. The sneers and sniffs of snobs aside, I am convinved that if Will were alive today, he'd be writing movie screenplays (or even television), NOT stage plays, which today are aimed at a narrow, elite, theatre-going audience.

As a literature professor who has been teaching The Tempest for a decade now, I have always been singularly bemused by the lack of a filmed version that really captures the magical spirit of the play. The old TV Richard Burton show is well-acted but silly, the BBC version has great actors but terrible, flat production values, Prospero's Books is brilliant but incomprehensible to all but those who know the play intimately, Derek Jarman's version is terribly dated and, despite being a good "film," just doesn't work as The Tempest, in my opinion. The other, "scholastic" releases are plagued by poor production and/or undistinguished acting. And I won't even bother with "adaptations" of the plot, such as Forbidden Planet or Cassavettes's Tempest.

Until this version, the only truly excellent version of The Tempest was the HBO animated one, but at 25 minutes, not much of Shakespeare's story remained intact.

Just last week I had the great pleasure of seeing Julie Taymor's The Tempest in London. It was absolutely amazing. The magic was there! The acting, for the most part, was brilliant. The script contained enough of the actual play's language that the minor tweakings to make it easier for contemporary audiences did not bother me a bit. The visuals were absolutely stunning. The movie was a joy from start to finish. I can't wait to see it again--repeatedly--to savor all the special moments over and again. My only regret is that my students will be unable to see it this year due to the late release date.

[REVISION NOTE: This year's students had the opportunity to see this version, and they overwhelmingly LOVED it. It brought the play to life for them. At last, I no longer have to convince them that The Tempest really IS a great play! 01/19/12]

If you love Shakespeare, and if you enjoy movie adaptations of the plays, DO NOT MISS THIS ONE!

I saw this movie at the Chicago Film Festival last fall, introduced by Alan Cumming. While I'm a huge fan of Helen Mirren (and Alan), I was much less familiar with Julie Taymor, and not sure what I was in for.

If you're the same, then you can relax this is brilliant, and I wish that Mirren & Taymor would do some other Shakespeare plays with Helen in the (strong, male) lead. Aside from a few minutes in the very beginning, where I thought the verisimilitude of the storm interfered with actually being able to understand what the actors were SAYING there weren't any problems with either the language or being able to follow the plot.

Despite changing of the gender of the lead character, all the other elements we expect from Shakespeare remain intact: elevated, aristocratic figures bickering over their positions or inheritance, a love story featuring the younger generation of characters, a comedic subplot running alongside the primary plot, etc. And the acting was great top to bottom those who weren't aware that RusselL Brand could actually act will be very pleasantly surprised, and we get the amazing performances we expected from the "known" names. Reeve Carney comes off least well, but that is the fault of the character having so little to do (and most of THAT being to look attractive and moon over the young woman).

All in all, I was very happy I was able to catch this in the cinema, and can hardly wait until I'm able to own a copy.

Buy The Tempest (2010) Now

If you've been following the travails of Julie Taymor's Spiderman production for Broadway, you will understand them a little better once you watch the opening shipwreck scene in her version of The Tempest. It is elaborate and detailed and far removed from the play itself, which of course opens with a brief onboard scene and then goes to Prospero and Miranda on shore for a long scene of explication of their exile on the island. The genius in Taymor's take on the Tempest is to give us Prospera instead of Prospero and, especially, to give us Helen Mirren as Prospera. She is wonderful as always, and convincing throughout. I loved her delivery of the Act 4, Scene 1 "Our revels now are ended" speech that captures both the play and life itself in a few short lines. The rest of the cast, Chris Cooper, Russell Brand et al, is uniformly excellent except the young actor who plays Ferdinand and who reads his lines like he is, well, reading his lines from a script held in his hands. Taymor takes liberties with Shakespeare's text (the credits read something like "written by Julie Taymor based on a text by William Shakespeare") and Prospera's epilogue is a song over the closing credits, but overall this Tempest is in spirit faithful to the play and well worth seeing.

Read Best Reviews of The Tempest (2010) Here

The final Opus of William Shakespeare was carried to the big screen with that required vision, secure pulse and distinguished visuals without lacking the spirit of the play.

Helen Mirren is actually (Who can deny it?)one of the three best actresses in the world. She chews the whole show all the way through. But additionally the narrative rhtyhm never decays. Taymor (The Lion king and Titus, proves by far how domains Shakespeare's nerve) never abuses of the visual effects (dislike many of her colleagues).

And the outcome could not be more succesful. One of the best twenty films of the last year. No doubt it and go for it.

Want The Tempest (2010) Discount?

I'm a bit of a Shakespeare nut, owning the large majority of his plays on DVD, and often more than one version of the more popular plays. So I was eager for a new version of "The Tempest," and I wasn't able to catch this one in the theaters since it never played near where I live. Unfortunately nearly all of the reviews I had read of this version were decidedly mixed. Still, I wasn't going to let them keep me from seeing it. Well, I'm really glad I bought it because it's *much* better than the mixed reviews had led me to believe. Helen Mirren's excellent interpretation of "Prospero" as "Prospera" strikes me as quite natural -that is, it doesn't come across as a trendy gender-switching gimmick -and most of the other actors are superb as well. The "special effects," particularly with Ariel, are effectively handled. My only reservation, in fact, has to with Djimon Hounsou's performance as Caliban. He himself is, I believe, very good, but his strong accent sometimes makes it difficult to understand Caliban's speeches, which include some of the loveliest, most touching in the play. Nevertheless, I strongly recommend this DVD, which includes a terrific "making of" bonus extra.

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