Bill Gibron is a veteran film critic from Tampa, Florida.It's been a rough couple of years for Julie Taymor. After the pseudo success of the cinematic hit or miss Beatles 'musical' Across the Universe, the famed artistic director of stage, opera, and film sunk all her energies into bringing the U2 penned rock spectacular Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, to Broadway. Things did not go well. Needless to say, the months of controversy, injury, and critical lambasting eventually took its toll. Among mounting costs and a massive amount of media scrutiny/frenzy, Taymor was fired. That, along with the limp reception for her film adaptation of Shakespeare's The Tempest, signaled a screeching halt to her growing creative legend. What? You didn't know that Taymor had again taken on the Bard in her own unusual way (her previous foray was Titus)? Well, she did, and the results remind us of what this often frustrating maverick can bring to the movies - that is, exceptional visuals and artistic acumen matched only by the overall emotional inertness.
On a beautiful island in the middle of the sea, the sorceress Prospera (Helen Mirren) has waited. Unfairly usurped from her position as Duchess of Milan by her brother Antonio (Chris Cooper), she has spent her time raising her daughter Miranda (Felicity Jones) and learning the ways of magic. Over the course of years, she has mastered the spirits - in the form of an obedient entity called Ariel (Ben Whishaw) - and turned the island's craven monster, Caliban (Djimon Hounsou) into her slave.
In a vision, she sees her brother's ship nearing the atoll. Calling up a storm, she strands him and his party, including son Ferdinand (Reeve Carney), the King of Milan (David Strathairn), Sebastian (Alan Cumming), and the Crown's consort Gonzalo (Tom Conti). Also along are two servants, butler Stephano (Alfred Molina) and jester Trinculo (Russell Brand). As the men try and find out what happened, Prospera prepares her revenge. She will make Ferdinand fall madly in love with Miranda, while waiting for the proper moment to reclaim her title. In the meantime, our two knaves run into Caliban, and together, they plot again his wicked mistress.
While it does follow the famous play rather closely and applies the novel (and obviously proto-feminist) conceit of turning the lead character into a woman, The Tempest still feels like a stodgy old theater piece retrofitted into a visually stunning post modern pastiche/music video. Taymor, for all her attention to detail and art design flourishes, just can't get us to care about these characters. As Prospera, Mirren does her best, and you can see the Old Vic training in every perfectly clipped line reading. Similarly, Strathairn, Conti, and Cummings all bring the Bards arcane words to brilliant life.
Perhaps the most compelling characters are Ariel and Caliban. Rendered as both a splashy special effect (the former) and a clever bit of make-up and body paint (the latter), they make the most of Taymor's intense imagination. Even better, Whishaw and Hounsou enliven them with a significant sense of the supernatural.
And yet, there is nothing moving here. There is no sense of scope or struggle. Most of the time, The Tempest is just a bunch of great actors walking around an evocative backdrop, talking. Even the comic relief, in the form of Brand and Molina are more verbal in their "humor" than anything else. While Taymor attempts to push things into overdrive with her stunning array of illuminated tricks, we can't help but notice the lack of heart. There is still a hallow middle encased in this empirically ornate stunt. Clearly Taymor has talent. How she chooses to channel it is both her The Tempest's greatest gift...and grift.
