The Tempest

A film that seemed very promising, but ended up being very disappointing.

I have to say that I have never read The Tempest and I needed, before seeing the film, to read a little about the original play. Personally, I really like the works of William Shakespeare and have read several of his plays. And I've also noticed that the most staunch defenders of the renowned author's work are sometimes quite suspicious of cinematographic approaches. To some extent, I understand them, but I am also able to understand the need to make adaptations, cuts or changes. Perhaps the most shocking or questionable, in this case, is the change of sex of the central character, who would be a man and here was played very well by Helen Mirren.

The script essentially follows the story that almost everyone will know better than I, who have not yet read the book: Prospera, the Duchess of Milan, is expelled from her lands by King Alonso of Naples and her brother Antonio. Accused of witchcraft, she flees with her daughter, Miranda, and manages to reach an island inhabited by a creature, Caliban. Twelve years later, Miranda is a beautiful young woman, of marriageable age, and chance blows again in Prospera's favor when the men who removed her from power board a ship that, by magical arts, sinks in a furious storm, forcing them shipwrecked on her island.

The film is pleasant, but it suffers from a major flaw that is common in films with theatrical material, particularly Shakespearean adaptations: it sounds contrived and overly staged when it should sound more natural and realistic. Cinema wants actors not to act, speak or behave as if they were in a theater. If I wanted to see the original play, I would buy a theater ticket. I understand director Julie Taymor's effort to maintain fidelity to the dialogues and source material, but the truth is that she should have made the necessary adaptations, and sought to achieve greater realism and authenticity, both through the dialogues and ma...