OVP: The Tempest (2010)

Film: The Tempest (2010)
Stars: Helen Mirren, Felicity Jones, Djimon Hounsou, Russell Brand, Alfred Molina, Chris Cooper, Alan Cumming, Tom Conti, David Strathairn, Ben Whishaw
Director: Julie Taymor
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Costume Design)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 1/5 stars

Julie Taymor is a director I know more in theory than in practice.  From the gossip pages (she seems to pop up with relative frequency amongst the art house tabloids) and her highly, deeply visual artistic ventures, it's rare that she actually manages to contain all her imagination and ideas into something as concrete as a film, and so I do believe this is the first time I've ever sat down through one of her movies.

The film and its plot is well known to almost anyone who made it through eleventh grade English, and so I am not going to rehash it (though for those confused why Mirren is at the lead, this film features Prospera, the duke's wife, rather than Prospero).  Instead, I want to focus on Taymor the artist.  After all, there is a load of rather stunning artistry on display in this movie.  The movie, which sticks to the Shakespearean play for the most part, finds a way to have stunning, graphic, jaw-dropping visuals.  The combination of some impressive makeup work, a wildly inventive set of both ornate and still functional costumes from Sandy Powell (earning her yet another strongly deserved Oscar nomination), and a series of bold optical choices make the film a visually-pleasing work, and occasionally you get distracted from the serious flaws at play and fall under Taymor's spell.

These dreamy lulls, however, are short-lived, and the reasons are manifest.  For starters, the acting in the film, the thing that should be tying these moments together, is trite and abysmal.  I don't know if it was because Taymor secretly wanted to turn this into a rock opera (the high musicality of the film and in particular its punk elements, are omnipresent), but Russell Brand and Shakespeare are in the oil and water category of combinations.  Brand, an actor I have yet to discover the appeal of, plays Russell Brand and nothing more in every role, and this is no exception.  Joining him in the bad acting camp is Alfred Molina, who occasionally has the time to play something subdued, but typically falls into the hammy category.

Worse than both, and most unfortunate of the cast is Djimon Hounsou, a two-time Oscar nominee who nonetheless cannot find any sense of his character, the intriguing Caliban.  Hounsou's character bellows frequently and without reason, and though he is certainly not helped by having Molina and Brand to play off of, his character gets lost and his motives are murky at best (and physical comedy is not in his wheelhouse).  I have never seen either of Hounsou's Oscar nominated performances (we'll get there eventually), but I have to say that I wasn't impressed by my introduction to him here.

Of the entire cast, only Mirren seems to know what she's doing, finding a way to meld the lyrical verse of Shakespeare with a performance that seems like a real person. She finds emotion, inflection that matches the story, something that Brand, Molina, and Hounsou completely disregard.  Felicity Jones and Reeve Carney are both bland, and Carney cannot sell the admittedly syrupy Shakespearean love odes he's selling to his beloved Miranda.  And while Ben Whishaw's whispy Ariel wasn't necessarily bad, he didn't seem to find the right balance between the playful and the imprisoned.

Taymor's random moments of rock in the film seemed a bit out-of-place, and also occasionally seemed to come out of nowhere.  Are the characters aware of the music they are interacting with?  Are they aware that most of that music is about 370 years early?  The film never really addresses it, and Taymor's style doesn't have the fluidity that, say, Baz Luhrmann's best films do to make the random moments of rock make sense.

I've prattled on and on in a bedlam fashion just now (much like the film), and while I will say that the film is a failure on most counts, Taymor's style is something that would work in other mediums, and perhaps even in film.  If we decided to, say, bring the Silent Era truly to the modern cinema, rather than just pay homage like The Artist, she'd be the near perfect choice for it, as there is beauty to behold on-screen, and without sound, the acting and directional choices wouldn't seem as severe.  However, until she can figure out a way to bring out something better from her actors and give them a stronger filmic direction to take their performances, she's probably better off in the world of stage and opera, where bigger can be better.

And those are my thoughts, but what are yours?  What do you think of Taymor, and of The Tempest in particular?  Did any elements on display work for you?  And are you as excited as I that we'll soon be starting our 2010 OVP writeups?!?!