It is a distinctive acting framework that embodies the epic Shakespeare play, but this time it will be very different. Now, this play changes by changing the gender of the main character, Prospero, from male to female and following the wizard's journey through Prosperity through vengeance to forgiveness as it controls a magical island and may be trying to unleash its powers against enemies everywhere.
Julie Taymor has a theatre director's idea of how movies work. That's not a compliment.
New Yorker
December 27, 2010
Taymor, by turning Prospero into a woman while retaining an "imperialist" view of Caliban, will no doubt simultaneously please and enrage left-wing critics. The rest of us can enjoy the movie's strengths...
7M Pictures
September 28, 2011
Hundreds of years ago, Shakespeare would have never imagined this story could look like Taymor's vision.
Normally I'd watch Helen Mirren in anything, even if she was just putting out the laundry or reading the phone book. But, given the roteness of her line readings here, it might have been better if the phone book rather than Shakespeare was her text.
The costumes designed by Sandy Powell - leather gowns and military uniforms, Renaissance in silhouette and detailed with zippers - are the film's most arresting element.
Dispensing with tableau compositions, this adaptation feels liberated from static theatrical and, to a lesser degree, cinematic convention by the overall openness of its staging and camerawork that's somewhere between handheld and Steadicam.
