Los libros de Próspero

John Gielgud plays ex-Duke Prospero in Peter Greenaway's version of Shakespeare's The Tempest, stuck on an island with sprite, Ariel, monster servant Caliban and his beloved daughter Miranda, who falls in love with Prospero's enemy's son Ferdinand.

By and large, you either love or hate Greenaway who, as on this occasion, devotes his time to the film's visuals, somewhat at the expense of the emotions that the tale should bring. If you accept this though it is a rare treat. Greenaway's design for every second of this unique film experience is full of dance, colour, striking architecture, cinematic tricks and wonderfully choreographed movement (and an awful lot of nudity) topped off by Michael Nyman's music. It has oft been said that Greenway's films are like watching a moving renaissance painting and this is particularly the case here. Startling production to look at, if possibly a bit hard work at times.

Shakespeare is without peer, the man of whom Harold Bloom said he invented humanity. `The Tempest' is his richest and essentially his last play, clearly about himself and his career. John Gielgud is the finest Shakespearean actor of our age. Greenaway is the most creative, lush and introspective filmmaker working.

This film is important.

I've already had one comment some time back. But on reviewing, there are two things I'd like to point you to when you see it.

Prospero is based on Shakespeare himself of course, but also on Thomas Harriot, who was a Kabbalist. Harriot had led a mission to the new world in 1585, where he wintered over with Algonquian priests. He came back convinced of having discovered a new cosmology which he never published (because of continuing trials for heresy). But he did share with Galileo, Kepler and Descartes.

Shakespeare satirized Harriot in `Love's Labors Lost' as Holofernes, because Harriot was then allied with an opposing clique (including rival poet Marlowe). But they became close as events unfolded.

The first point is to look for Thomas Harriot's only published work, about his trip to Virginia. It is the Book of Utopias, with the paintings by artist John White. Just after that the sprites act out the Indian magical circle described by Harriot.

Second: Harriot's Kabbalah is based on 21 paths that the magician can open, and one that opens automatically as part of the game of life. Here, Greenaway has Prospero open the 21 books in weaving his magic. When he closes them, the spell recedes. The 22nd is the Book of Games, which the lovers open and close. Kabbalah provides for two `invisible' paths for creating magical artifacts. This we have in the Folio and The Tempest, numbers 23 and 24.

Gielgud suggested the collaboration, and we suppose the scholarship was a joint project. But this is deep work indeed, the only production I know that understood what the play is all about.

Greenaway says: "Theres a project, I'd like very much to do, called Prospero's Creatures' about what happened before the beginning. Sort of a prelude to The Tempest. And I've also written a play called Miranda, about what happens afterwards on the ship on the way home. It's about what happens to innocence and how it has to be destroyed."

We can only hope.

This film is one of the very few examples of a cinema as a visual art and that is why it irritates so many people. It's very sad but one doesn't need a screen to follow 99,9 % of the movies made for the last one hundred years of the history of cinematography: you can simply broadcast them on radio. But this one belongs to 0,1 %(as well as Fellini's Otto e Mezzo, or Paradzhanov's Sayat Nova, for example) that you really have to WATCH. So try to perceive "Prospero's Books" not just as an illustrative material to some pieces of literature, but as an art exhibition in motion. Maybe that will make it easier for you, dear Hollywood junk viewer.

This is Peter Greenaway's most humane and enthralling feature, a visual tour-de-force which re-interprets Shakespeare's 'The Tempest' through the books of magic with which Prospero creates his realm. Sir John Gielgud gives a moving, heartfelt farewell performance in the title role, Michael Clarke is a sinuous, demonic Caliban, and Michael Nyman's score is fittingly triumphant. One sequence - the Masque - even turns the film into an opera.

Although the visuals are overloaded to a level of decadence rarely seen on film, it is always with a purpose. One quibble; Prospero's overlaying of his own voice on the characters makes some of the dialogue difficult to follow, especially if you are unfamiliar with the source material. The film demands to be seen on a wide screen.

Prospero's Books is perhaps difficult to watch and requires some patience, but it doesn't deserve the dragging through the mud that it has received from some of these comments. The best way to approach this film is to just calm down and sit back and enjoy it on a psychedelic level. To question it too much is to miss the point. Also, I don't understand the focus on the nudity that many of the comments here have. Again, it's a matter of just making yourself comfortable with it, and moving on. This is a remarkable piece of work, and it needs to be approached with an understanding that it is simply very different from what most people are used to seeing. And thank goodness for that. To say that it is "the worst movie ever" or some such comment is incredibly unfair and a bit misguided.