Prospero's Books

Directed by: Peter Greenaway

RS: Not Rated Average User Rating: 3.5of 4 Stars

1991 Foreign

Lock up the tots and blindfold Granny -- Peter Greenaway is at it again. The filmmaker, whose last effort, The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover, ended with the leading lady's serving her lover as an entree, has turned to Shakespeare's last play, The Tempest, for inspiration. John Gielgud stars as Prospero, the duke who is exiled to a Mediterranean island with his young daughter, Miranda (Isabelle Pasco), and twenty-four beloved books.

Few students of the Bard ever envisaged an island full of naked inhabitants with a fondness for penis decoration. But the method to Greenaway's madness is to see Prospero as Shakespeare and the other characters as figments plucked from his heady imagination. Greenaway intensifies the conceit by using Gielgud's voice for all the roles until the end, when the characters take on their own lives and tongues. The technique is not as off-putting as it sounds, thanks to Gielgud, now eighty-seven, who is astounding.

Mixing film and high-definition-video techniques, Greenaway and legendary cinematographer Sacha Vierny create visual miracles all the more dazzling when you learn that the entire movie was shot over eight weeks in an Amsterdam studio. Greenaway bombards you with images, with no regard for the average attention span. Is he a genius or a fake? Debating that question is almost as stimulating as watching a Greenaway film.

PETER TRAVERS
RS 617