Missy - The Tempest ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

 I love the Tempest and this is a visually stunning Tempest with some interesting editorial choices.

It was not particularly well received when it came out but everyone recognized how beautifully it was shot.

It’s a play I already enjoyed prior to this version and I liked it immensely when I first saw it. This time I liked it a lot but down graded it from 5 stars to 4 due to a sort of flat feel I got from some of the dialog and delivery.

Probably my favorite genre of story is Elfpunk and much of the origin of that love lies in works like The Books of Magic by Neil Gaiman or The Borderlands anthologies.

Those works always feature fairies and elves, much in the way contemporary Romantasy books feature The Fae. One of the things that differentiates these two sub genera’s of Urban Fantasy (cliche fairy porn in the moderns notwithstanding) is that all of the old stuff had some basis in Midsummer’s nights Eve and The Tempest. 

The courts of Oberon and Titania featured heavily and Ariel and Puck show up all the time. Because of this most of my non-Celtic mythology  fairy’s look like and behave like Ariel does in this production. It’s a weird conformation bias of ‘this spirit is the one most of my fairies are based on therefore he acts like a fairy should act.’.

I love Ben Wishaw in this. For me this is the perfect Ariel and Fairy. Super capricious, semi androgynous, sweet and terrifying is IT.

Here he is in one of his scary modes showing off some of the beautiful makeup and lighting that I love in this film.

I think this movie did right by Ariel and I’ve always been drawn to that character so props for that. 

I was even impressed by the groans from within the tree part that sounds good on the page but can be cringy on the stage. 

The other characterization that I am drawn to here is Helen Mirin’s Prospera. Gender swaps in Shakespearean productions are fairly common, but usually not that great. Julie Taymor said that she wanted to try it because she thought she could pull it off as not too gimmicky. I think she managed that. 

This will circle me around to my Shakespeare writing pretty much only fathers and daughters theme. I found myself sympathetic with Prospera in a way I never was with Prospero. When he made arbitrary seeming decisions to challenge the love of Ferdinand I felt like he was just pulling power plays but when Prospera did it suddenly I was all in favor. “That’s your daughter” I thought “You’ve got to protect her. You know what men are like.” And when Próspero was inconsistent with Airiel I felt like he was just some typical noble pleasing himself but when Prospera did it I felt like she was tenuously balancing and desperate. When Próspero was controlling of his child and her love and her world I thought it was manipulative and self serving but when Prospera was the same way it was caution and justice for those who had wronged her. 

So much of this is just me projecting but, of course, a good deal of it is just in how I’ve seen these characters preformed. 

I liked the gender swap. I like that it made me think about my assumptions. 

I even enjoyed the sexual subtext that Ariel and Prospera displayed. 

I know that many read Prospero as Shakespeare himself, in this his farewell play. He is the all powerful creator and manipulator of his world. 

I think there is a lot to that reading and I am more than sympathetic with it. 

In a non allegorical sense though, I’d rather be locked in a room with Prospera, flawed as she may be, than with Prospero.  

My Shout out here goes to Djimon Hounsou as Caliban. 

That is not a modern part and all of the colonial implications are sunk deep into this character. 

The chasm between the text and the modern viewer is widest here, I think. Slavery is assumed for one and abjectly rejected by the other and portraying that part sympathetically while staying true to the monster and flat villain on the page is a mighty big ask. 

I’ve seen Hounsou in other Shakespeare and always felt he had the chops but this is such a tricky line to walk that he deserves some special recognition. 

I don’t think that it’s an accident that these three are on the official movie poster. 

That brings me to the rest. Some good actors here and ones that I usually enjoy watching but noting great in this Tempest for me. 

Russel Brand is distractingly himself, the romance is uninteresting, the Kingly plot feels flat and even the conspiracy to murder feels contrived. 

Meh. 

This is why 4 stars not 5. 

Principal photography took place on the Big Island where my dad lives so points for that. 

The costumes were great. The music good. 

Definitely worth watching.

I love this play in its historical context as a reaction to the Brave New World that is colonial America. I love the retirement vibe of Prósperos final soliloquy. 

I love how much thought it engenders on topics of power, colonialism, gender, and parenting. 

The Tempest - 4 stars for pure watchability 

Mom score - 4 stars for brining up your daughter the best you can and setting her into the world with all the advantages you can manage. 

On to the Scottish play.