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Dreadfully Boring

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

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.

"The Tempest", in a sublime way, is both about itself and us, giving us a role inside the play itself and at the same time the opportunity to experience it from the outside; strongly about the art of telling stories and creating reality through them, Prospero is a wonderful archetype of a narrator.What Greenaway gives me is different yet much alike from what for example Tarkovsky gives, which may sound absurd considering the styles of film-making: the theatrical visual exuberance of Greenaway with overlaid images scarcely brings to mind the ethereally lingering camera shots of a Rublev or a Nostalghia. But if we go further, we notice that they are both as adventurous, going far away the horizon to uncharted visual territory. "The Pillow Book" (1996), although equally exuberantly visual, is far more accessible, and perhaps my favourite "Late Greenaway". Not that this doesn't have everything going for it, it is rather serious stuff. Sure, this is pompous and there are moments I'd rather shortened, and by the time we reach the wedding one, at least this particular viewer feels rather drained out. But this is so remarkably wonderful visually and deeply rich in its understanding/interpretation of Shakespeare that it doesn't really matter, but in other later Greenaways I don't feel as strongly about, this lack of deep-rooted humour makes them bothersome to watch. With "Prospero's Books" I'm more forgiving, I suppose, but as with some other amazing films ("A torinói ló" from 2011, for example), it can be tough to sit through.A notable thing, Michael Nyman's music. A wonderful experience on its own, Nyman's compositions have the power to amplify and annotate the images we see, and the effect works both ways. Curiously the music is taken from Nyman's "La Traversée de Paris". And the dancing is superb, as well as Sacha Vierny's work, that is, how it dwells in the space that surrounds it.I don't think it's easy to find a proper DVD of this, let alone a Blu-ray. I have this on an Italian DVD that, unfortunately, has only the dialogue in Italian, as well as a DVD released in Scandinavia. It's not amazing by any means, but I'm glad it exists. The back cover of the DVD has one of the funniest things I've seen. It actually states that the film has been directed by "the four-time Academy award winner Peter Greenaway".

I would not condemn this film, but the advances in areas of computer graphics has rendered this film somewhat old. The graphics look like they have been made by some teenager with flash. However there are quite nice cinematic pictures... I would suggest this to any cinematographer.For those who hate nudity... we're all born naked. We take showers, and we do not live in the Victorian era anymore (except perhaps the some US-suburbs have similar culture). I would not see anything bad in showing this to high school students... although I would think that most would be bored to death.I watched it gladly, as it was so well made.

Every now and again you hear radio djs inviting listeners to nominate movies that the listener can't stand or never watched all the way through. This is the movie that I think of...days later.It's got something to do with a play by Shakespeare. Not sure, but I think I bailed on this movie some 20 odd minutes into it...think I realised that my toenails wouldn't clip themselves, and they were looking at me imploringly to get cut.This movie just seemed boring and pretentious to me.Even though this is the first movie I've given such a low score to (which I've actually attempted to watch), I wouldn't want to put you off other movies by it's English director, Peter Greenaway. I remember thinking that his "The cook, the thief, his wife and her lover" was a truly great British film even though its content was at times stomach churning-a brilliant movie, but I can understand why people would balk at seeing it.Another good film by Greenaway was "A zed and two noughts". Again, it had some content that pushed the boundaries of good taste, but was intriguing nonetheless.The other film that I usually think of too late for such radio show topics is "Brazil". Never managed to watch that all the way through either-kept falling asleep!Unless you have a taste for self-important movies which are off-puttingly highly stylised, laboriously paced and difficult to follow, then steer clear of Prosero's Books.