the tempest: it's taymor-riffic

The Tempest: movie starring the conceptual stylings of Julie Taymor mostly

first off, the acting was FUCKING BRILLIANT.  miranda was amazing, caliban was amazing, and of course doc ock (name? alfred molina, apparently) and alan cummings were fantabulous--i thought chris cooper gave a good interpretation to a difficult part, as did the ariel dude, who we didn't really get to see due to the taymoring of the film, and, yeah, in my eyes, tom conti for the win.  felicity jones was brilliant in a part that one doesn't really need brilliance in, but in which brilliance is possible--djimon hounsou (hopefully spelling that right) was brilliant in a part that may be difficult to do justice to--and he did do it justice, freaking fabulous--but always has a certain amount of cachet around it.  i thought tom conti took a very possibly onerous part and turned it into something really really good.  i was a little conflicted about helen mirren.  i thought she did an excellent job of creating a character, but i wasn't sure that the character she created was being helped by the shakespeare.  the lines made sense--made painstaking sense--and were deeply felt, but it was like she was acting despite shakespeare instead of through him, and that bothered me, but it shouldn't too deeply, because she was very good.  reeve carney as what's-his-face was not good, but really funny, which made up for it.  apparently he was too cool to enunciate.  he had the immaculately kept iggy pop hair of edgy love, and nothing more was necessary than a few shirtless moments and an entirely inappropriate rendition of "o mistress mine" (yeah, why was that there?  so taymor could taymor around with more gender-political "exploration"?  if so, stop it, taymor! stop it now! the line "that can sing both high and low" was not written for you to dithyramb around with [or if it was, we truly do inhabit a creepy-ass universe]).

if taymor had to do with the choices of her actors, even if she fostered an environment in which they could make their choices, then she deserves a lot of credit for having done so.  but i thought the movie was a mess.  it was very entertaining--very entertaining.  i should give it some sort of pass for making the shakespeare so eminently filmable (a friend of mine says that the tempest really isn't filmable, and i felt like taymor turned it into an opulent feast of filmability, so i'm sure she deserves credit for that too).  but BOO!!!  BOO!!!

BOO!!!  it's like back in the day when i read an interview with the fool who directed that wildly awful version of mansfield park with frances o'connor, the one that in the end featured fanny writing sanditon or something for susan's amusement, in which above-mentioned fool of a director said something like, "i know there will be laura ashley bitches out there who will object to this movie because we show boob."  no, director fool, no.  we laura ashley bitches (i'm not actually one, but would much rather be ranged on their side than her's) are not objecting to your dumbass movie because it shows boob.  we are objecting to it because it neglected to capture even the tiniest particle of jane austen's intention or spirit, as well as a good third of the plot.

taymor did not go nearly to these lengths--we did see boob, but it was hermaphrodite man-boob (and, yes, it was tempting)--but she did make a mess, what with her desire to shove a special effect into every insecurity of signification.  i can't really go into specifics as deeply as i'd like without driving the blood pressure up dangerously high, but, as an example, the sandcastle miranda holds at the beginning: it crumbles.  in the rain.  when i pointed out how STUPID this conception of...whatever the hell it's supposed to mean...was, my friend said, basically, "but prospera starts out with everything and nothing and ends up with nothing and everything," and for a minute he made it sound good.  but then i thought back, and, no.  i mean, yes, my friend's interpretation of the significance of the sandcastle is awesome, but the sandcastle itself?  no.  no.  that shit could mean pretty much anything.  its meaning was entirely overridden by its desire to look cool.  yes, the most obvious interpretation is...uh, that prospera, by calling in a thunderstorm, has unleashed the destruction of her own castle of sand, or whatever*, but it's just such an unnecessary interpretive move.  it doesn't get us any nearer to the heart of matter (as niska would say)--sure, it's a visual metaphor, but it tells rather than showing.

what would i have her put in its place?  NOTHING.  INTERPRETIVE SILENCE.  just STOP DOING STUFF.  stop tim burtoning around.  shakespeare didn't make it this far because his work could be twisted into meaning--it meant in the first place.  it meant so much, taymor, (i'm a shakespeare-phile, i admit it completely) that even within your self-indulgent rigmarole it still surfaced at points.  but it had to struggle.  why make it struggle?  that's just rude, taymor.  be nice to sextacentarians (??).

i'm not saying that there's some ur-interpretation of shakespeare out there that can be latched onto and drug home like a theseus by the minotaur.  i'm saying that some attention to the text is required when making a movie of a play--either that, or you peter brooks it, and make sure that the fish you're boning is known to be your own fish (rrow), a move that is a bit like throwing on a flak jacket in a nuclear blast, but can at least protect you to some extent from a reasonably fair mind (which mine, on this subject, may totally not be).  shakespeare is not the instrument.  you are the instrument.  your own interpretation is entirely correct, but only if it's coming from the work--only if you're being plucked, like a fortepiano, from the inside.  don't tell me taymor isn't doing the plucking.  don't tell me she's not looking for opportunities to have harpies spit oil as a metaphor for...again, something (bp spill?  peace in the middle east?  bunnies?) and stupid, stupid gender-bending whatnottery for ariel, prospera, and the fools in their gowns.

it's like communist russia: the tempest pluck you.  taymor is clearly no candidate for an un-american activities investigation.  YEOUCH, sra.  what a burn!

i should apologize for a lot of this, because much of the movie was very watchable.  it just lit my fire, is all.  i can forgive ridiculousness, i can forgive incompetence, i can forgive idiotishness.  i CANNOT forgive all the jibber-jabber that films try to put us through, and the tempest's taymoring is a really prime example of it.  i am not turning the tempest into an example (my example of terrible filmic incompetence is and always will be the hours)--i am just holding it responsible for itself, which maybe nobody thought to do.  what the hell, guys?  come on!  stop plucking around!


*one of the bizarrities of my life is that, though a dedicated musician and quasi-dedicated writer, i'm not at all good at pinning meanings to metaphors.  i cling to theorists like derrida and de man for that reason--the inaccuracies of metaphoric assumption as propounded by said thinkers are like manna to my brain (but not literally), not just because they're interesting, but because they give me a leg to stand on.  but i should be completely clear that it's inability, not choice, that turns me away from the assumption that metaphors mean things (though thank god i have been turned away).