Prospero's Books (1991)

Prospero's Books (1991) was directed by Peter Greenaway. William Shakespeare is also given credit as a writer (play), because Shakespeare wrote "The Tempest." However, the movie is really Greenaway's concept of "The Tempest," not Shakespeare's concept. People have said, "Don't see this film unless you know the story of 'The Tempest'." True enough, because if the only thing you learn about "The Tempest" comes from Greenaway, you'll never want to see Shakespeare's play.The basic plot of the play is that the Duke of Milan (Prospero) and his daughter are marooned on an island. They get a chance for revenge when the people who forced them from Milan arrive on the island.Prospero has studied the occult, and he has a book of magic from which he has learned to be a powerful wizard. However, Shakespeare mentions that Prospero has other books with him on the island. Greenaway's concept is to present the story by telling us about each book in turn.Not a bad concept, when you think about it. However, the whole thing turns sour once Greenaway gets going. There are endless scenes of naked or near-naked men and women wandering around, dancing (sort of), and looking like they belong somewhere else. (It's a deserted island, don't forget.) You'd think that all this would be erotically charged, but it isn't. It just looks like a confusing underground nudist colony. Shakespeare's "pure spirit" named Ariel is played by four different actors, one of whom sings, one of whom pees, and so forth. John Gielgud, one of the great Shakespearean actors of the 20th Century, plays Prospero. I would love to have seen Gielgud as Prospero in "The Tempest." What he's doing in this movie is beyond me.I can enjoy creative, cutting-edge versions of Shakespeare's plays. Some of them work, some of them don't. This one didn't work. I saw the film as part of an honors seminar I audited called "Shakespeare on Film." The college students with whom I saw the film also found the nudity boring. The film was shown on a "classroom-sized" large screen. It will be just as unsatisfying on DVD.

Once upon a time, Peter Greenaway was considered a serious artist. 1991's Prospero's Books ended that. To understand this, let's remember that in the 1960s and 1970s, Greenaway became known for some witty, short films playing with several of his obsessions, like counting, classification, sexuality, etc. He graduated to feature length films in the 1980s: after the (unwatchable) The Falls, he made a series of fine, intelligent, cerebral (if sometimes hard to take) art movies: The Draughtsman's Contract, A Zed and Two Noughts, The Belly of an Architect, Drowning by Numbers. These four movies, made back to back, are his best in a 40-plus year career. Then, in 1989, came The Cook, The Thief, his Wife and Her Lover, his most successful film so far, and a truly success de scandal, with his brilliant but often shocking images. After The Cook, everyone called him a genius, and he might have believed those accolades, since right after that he made one of the most self-indulgent (and unwatchable) films ever made: Prospero's Books. An adaptation (for lack of a better word) of Shakespeare's The Tempest, made at the request of its star, the octogenarian John Gielgud (who have played the part of Prospero on stage, and had unsuccessfully asked a number of prominent directors to bring the play with him to the screen), this film is truly terrible: shot entirely on a sound stage, is a parade of naked people, awful use of digital imagery (which has rapidly look obsolete with the passage of time), and poor old Gielgud speaking all the parts (!). The movie looks as the filming of a Shakespeare play as made by an idiot savant, except that this idiot doesn't even look here to be very savant. Not surprisingly, few people liked Prospero's Books. After this fiasco, Greenaway has continued making movies, as well as exhibitions for museums, but with the exception of The Pillow Book, almost no one has watched them, or care for them.

Some rambling thoughts on a fondly remembered film...I saw this at the New York Film festival years ago and the film has stayed with me ever since. The film, a retelling of Shakespeares's The Tempest done in a way that only Peter Greenaway could do. We do get a retelling of the story that we all know but the film also concerns itself to a large degree with the inner life of Prospero (he's the only one you hear for most of the film), and so focus's on his collection of books that he was stranded with on his island, which are the things that give him comfort. The books which are explained to us in intriguing asides, take life in mind bending overlays of images and sounds that create pictures and worlds with in pictures, something the also bleeds out of the books and into the story itself. The layering effect is staggering and seeing this on the big screen with a good sound system is akin to being dropped into a sensory overload tank with too much information pouring into the viewer. I remember wanting to stop the film some fifteen minutes in simple because I was unable to continue to process what I was seeing. The numerous repeat viewing, an absolute must for this film because of all the film contains, have always been done in small controlled amounts of however much I can stand before my head fills up. This is a pushing of the boundaries of film and cinematic expression that will bore many, overwhelm others and enthrall still others. Love it or hate it this is a technical achievement of the highest order, its also an intellectual one as well. Does it achieve what it sets out to do? I'm not always sure but its nice to know that there is at least one filmmaker who doesn't think that his audience is too stupid to have its mind stretched.A must for anyone who wants to have their mind stretched or see what can be done with film, just be prepared to simply too much information...

"Sir" John Gielgud must have become senile to star in a mess of a movie like this one.;This is one of those films, I suppose, that is considered "art," but don't be fooled.....it's garbage. Stick to the "art" you can admire in a frame because the films that are labeled as such are usually unintelligible forgeries like this.In this masterpiece, Giegud recites Shakespeare's "The Tempest" while the camera pans away to nude people. one of them a little kid urinating in a swimming pool. Wow, this is heady stuff and real "art," ain't it?? That's just one example. Most of the story makes no sense, is impossible to follow and, hence, is one that Liberal critics are afraid to say they didn't "understand" so they give it high marks to save their phony egos. You want Shakespeare? Read his books.