Some magickians collect books about magick and some magickians collect magickal books. The wizard Prospero, exiled Duke of Milan (Gielgud) has both kinds in his library. In this magnificent film version of Shakespeare's The Tempest, old Prospero has - with the help of his books - engineered a magickal storm to sink the usurpers who stole his dukedom, and maroon them upon the very island where he now reigns. Part opera, part ballet, part cartoon and part old fashioned movie epic, this is undoubtedly the most creative translation of Shakespeare into film that I have ever seen. In the role of a career, Gielgud is a hundred different shades of splendid as the old Duke-cum-Magus.
There are endless ways to approach the timeless, archetypal story of The Tempest, so one naturally wonders why Greenway chose a bibliophiliac obsession with Prospero's book collection. Animated film depictions of the Duke's sorcerous volumes erupt into the narrative almost as non sequitors, and yet, strangely do not distract from the dreamlike tale as it unfolds. In Prospero's Books, literature has become kinetic and alive while live action has become literary.
There is no Necronomicon
in Prospero's library, but Greenway might as well have put one there. There is an atlas filled with maps of Hell, used as a guidebook by Orpheus in his journey to the underworld. It is marked by the "tooth bites of Cerberus" and its pages are singed by flame. There is a disturbing, heretical medical manual which "questions the efficiency of God." There is a pornographic grimoire. And there is a book on human/animal hybrids called The Ninety-Two Conceits of the Minotaur. All of the above contain magickally animated illustrations which flicker and throb and come alive on the pages.And to think, you were excited about CD-ROM when it first came out!
1998 © John Wisdom Gonce III. All rights reserved.