Spoilers herein.
Thinking about film can occasionally be dangerous. Some films are designed to trigger this, but once in a while some rather simple film unintentionally leads me into uncharted territory. This IS a simple, unassuming film, but it prompted more rumination than say Branagh's `The Tempest' cleverly masquerading as `Dracula.'
I have had only one experience with Jarman, with his `Wittgenstein,' which actually offended me with its lack of nuance. Jarman is that kind of artist who has a single impulse, one thing to say and adapts any material to support it. Like others of this type - Stone, Spike, Campion - that impulse is richer than a mere political view and their expressive talent is similarly rich. But no matter how technically sweet their expression, the fact remains that it is applied to a view of the world that bleaches rather than distills, simplifies rather than clarifies and dulls into stereotype instead of sharpening into archetype.
Shakespeare works with ideas; those ideas have agency, engage in being themselves and weave their own tapestry in a spirit-like world, somewhat independent of human action. He expresses that tapestry in words where the manifold ambiguities and multiple threads reinforce each other, idea and meaning. Those words necessitate characters and situations and such, but characters are mere parts in a celestial machine. `The Tempest' is, to my mind, the most perfect and self-referential of his constructions: the one most concerned with its own nature, creation and structure. It is bottomless, worthy of exploration for years.
Now, along comes a stage tradition that believes the entire world of drama revolves around characters, the way they are written and played. Unfortunately, when actors hijack Shakespeare, they turn the equation on its head. Suddenly the tapestry of finely spun ideas has to be reduced to a few strong, obvious threads in order to `explain' and support the plot. So `Romeo' becomes a love story, `Hamlet' about indecision, and `Tempest' about revenge. It is a travesty as blunt as TeeVee wrestling. So-called schools conspire with the selfishness of the theater market to perpetuate this.
Now here's my dilemma. I liked this production; I really did. Miranda is supposed to be 14, sexually pure, and the `white space' on the conceptual palette. Greenaway's `Prospero's Books' - the best film Tempest by far - understood this. Around this center of discovery, which includes us the audience, swirls all sorts of confabulated issues, cosmic and trivial. At least in the play.
Jarman gives us a different type of center: a buxom, sexy punk rocker who has the best understanding in the cast of vocal sculpting and presence. And at the same time, Jarman so simplifies the play and characters (by omission, by making things `clear,' by using unsophisticated language, by giving each character a `role') that he turns the whole construction on is head. Everything else is white space EXCEPT her. She is the magician. This is truly an unsettling notion. All the swishy dancing at the end is mere background noise to this dangerous notion.
The photography and staging is a treat unto itself. Of all his plays, this one is the most difficult to stage because Shakespeare himself was struggling with the new technologies of the art. He created all sorts of hooks for effects, and much of the action depends on those effects. Jarman's notion is inspired, using the abbey as he does. It is perfect in its own way. Miranda's costume - the only one that matters - together with Ferdinand's nudity is pretty effective.
So where I was expecting Shakespeare's engrossing insights on the superficialities of the world, I instead find myself captivated by that very world. It may take some time to recover.
See this and imagine the perfect film Tempest. At the moment, I would include this dual, dangerous notion of passive/aggressive, sexuality in the girl as part of the ambiguity, something Shakespeare couldn't do (but would if he were here today). It would be between Jarman's lines and those of Larry Clark. It would be animated in the manner of `Sprited Away' (itself a version of the Tempest) but all players would be nude. It would have grand political clockworks like `Ran` and simple, imaginative love like Holly Golighty's. It would have the literary layering and emphasis on image-then-language of Greenaway. It would have all the special effects machinery of the most popular current version of `The Tempest,' `The Matrix' (without the guns and glasses), and by this I mean not the effects of the movie but of the world within. And it would be a serial.
Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 4: Worth watching.
Thinking about film can occasionally be dangerous. Some films are designed to trigger this, but once in a while some rather simple film unintentionally leads me into uncharted territory. This IS a simple, unassuming film, but it prompted more rumination than say Branagh's `The Tempest' cleverly masquerading as `Dracula.'
I have had only one experience with Jarman, with his `Wittgenstein,' which actually offended me with its lack of nuance. Jarman is that kind of artist who has a single impulse, one thing to say and adapts any material to support it. Like others of this type - Stone, Spike, Campion - that impulse is richer than a mere political view and their expressive talent is similarly rich. But no matter how technically sweet their expression, the fact remains that it is applied to a view of the world that bleaches rather than distills, simplifies rather than clarifies and dulls into stereotype instead of sharpening into archetype.
Shakespeare works with ideas; those ideas have agency, engage in being themselves and weave their own tapestry in a spirit-like world, somewhat independent of human action. He expresses that tapestry in words where the manifold ambiguities and multiple threads reinforce each other, idea and meaning. Those words necessitate characters and situations and such, but characters are mere parts in a celestial machine. `The Tempest' is, to my mind, the most perfect and self-referential of his constructions: the one most concerned with its own nature, creation and structure. It is bottomless, worthy of exploration for years.
Now, along comes a stage tradition that believes the entire world of drama revolves around characters, the way they are written and played. Unfortunately, when actors hijack Shakespeare, they turn the equation on its head. Suddenly the tapestry of finely spun ideas has to be reduced to a few strong, obvious threads in order to `explain' and support the plot. So `Romeo' becomes a love story, `Hamlet' about indecision, and `Tempest' about revenge. It is a travesty as blunt as TeeVee wrestling. So-called schools conspire with the selfishness of the theater market to perpetuate this.
Now here's my dilemma. I liked this production; I really did. Miranda is supposed to be 14, sexually pure, and the `white space' on the conceptual palette. Greenaway's `Prospero's Books' - the best film Tempest by far - understood this. Around this center of discovery, which includes us the audience, swirls all sorts of confabulated issues, cosmic and trivial. At least in the play.
Jarman gives us a different type of center: a buxom, sexy punk rocker who has the best understanding in the cast of vocal sculpting and presence. And at the same time, Jarman so simplifies the play and characters (by omission, by making things `clear,' by using unsophisticated language, by giving each character a `role') that he turns the whole construction on is head. Everything else is white space EXCEPT her. She is the magician. This is truly an unsettling notion. All the swishy dancing at the end is mere background noise to this dangerous notion.
The photography and staging is a treat unto itself. Of all his plays, this one is the most difficult to stage because Shakespeare himself was struggling with the new technologies of the art. He created all sorts of hooks for effects, and much of the action depends on those effects. Jarman's notion is inspired, using the abbey as he does. It is perfect in its own way. Miranda's costume - the only one that matters - together with Ferdinand's nudity is pretty effective.
So where I was expecting Shakespeare's engrossing insights on the superficialities of the world, I instead find myself captivated by that very world. It may take some time to recover.
See this and imagine the perfect film Tempest. At the moment, I would include this dual, dangerous notion of passive/aggressive, sexuality in the girl as part of the ambiguity, something Shakespeare couldn't do (but would if he were here today). It would be between Jarman's lines and those of Larry Clark. It would be animated in the manner of `Sprited Away' (itself a version of the Tempest) but all players would be nude. It would have grand political clockworks like `Ran` and simple, imaginative love like Holly Golighty's. It would have the literary layering and emphasis on image-then-language of Greenaway. It would have all the special effects machinery of the most popular current version of `The Tempest,' `The Matrix' (without the guns and glasses), and by this I mean not the effects of the movie but of the world within. And it would be a serial.
Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 4: Worth watching.