Touches You

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

How does the average person approach Greenaway without writing his work off as pretentious? The most obvious answer is that they probably can't. Greenaway's films are not intended as "entertainment" for a wide audience, nor to be watched and forgotten. His last few films require a great deal of sustained concentration and patience which, unfortunately, is the domain of a small and shrinking group of people as cinema-goers lose the ability to maintain focus. I recall seeing Prospero's Books on its initial release at Melbourne's beautiful single screen cinema palace, The Astor Theatre, to a packed house, seating just over a thousand people. Once the film started barely five minutes had elapsed before the first patrons began exiting the cinema. By the time the film was halfway through there were half a dozen bodies left in the cavernous theatre. I confess that this first screening was hard work for me and my friends, who slogged it out until the end. I have since had the pleasure of studying the film at University in a "Shakespeare in Adaptation" class that I found especially rewarding. Greenaway's use of various spectacular though distancing cinematic devices — sumptuously busy mise-en-scene, multiple overlapping screens, long takes, minimal character movement, competing narrative devices, and the use of Sir John Gielgud as the sole voice, perform not only Prospero but the dialogue of all the other characters — is ingenious and becomes increasingly so with repeat watches. But beware: that first screening verges on punishing. Viewers new to the film might be helped to know that it is an adaptation of Shakespeare's The Tempest, the final play before the playwright left London, and it seems fitting that Gielgud was cast in the role of Prospero, the rightful Duke of Milan who was betrayed by his brother and cast adrift with his daughter Miranda on a boat which found its was to an island full of mysterious unseen sprites. Through studying a series of mysterious books, Prospero learns to control and command the phantasmic denizens of the island (the many unclothed extras in Greenaway's film), who do his bidding. Some scholars contend that Prospero is based on Shakespeare himself and his control of the wraithlike beings represent the playwright reflecting on his own inventions. It makes sense then that Gielgud plays the role of all the characters, controlling them all even as he sits in his study outside of the action scribing the story while simultaneously inhabiting the play as one its characters. Only when Prospero forgives his shipwrecked brother for his act of treachery and the world is set right are the other actors' voices finally heard. Once you get past Greenaway's various tricks and stylistic flourishes, his adaptation becomes deeply moving, assisted by Michael Nyman's hypnotic score. As a matter of interest, another wonderful film based on Shakespeare's The Tempest is the 1956 Fred M. Wilcox-directed science fiction spectacular, Forbidden Planet, which stars Officer Frank Drebin himself, Leslie Neilsen and the amazing humanoid robot fondly known as Robbie the Robot. Walter Pigeon plays the Prospero character whose study of the ancient technology of a lost civilisation on the planet has given him incredible powers to conjure monsters from his imagination.

An imaginative telling of Shakespeare's "The Tempest". However, that's one of the few good things I can say about it: it is inane, gratuitous and pretentious. Very little makes sense, even at the most basic of levels. Most scenes just seem to be excuses to have hordes of people, men and women, run around naked. Critics will call that bold, I call it gratuitous and meaningless.Performances are hard to judge, as it is difficult to look past the meaningless, random plot. John Gielgud provides gravitas in the lead role, but his voice seems to drone on after a while and get quite irritating. Nobody else is worth a mention.If you're looking for a good version of The Tempest, this is not it.

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.

"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.