PROSPERO'S BOOKS

UK, 1991, 132 minutes, Colour.
John Gielgud, Michael Clark, Michel Blanc, Erland Josephson, Isabelle Pascoe, Tom Bell, Kenneth Cranham, Mark Rylance.
Directed by Peter Greenaway.

It almost seems an impertinence to try to review this film, especially briefly. It is written and directed by the idiosyncratic Peter Greenaway.

He has taken Shakespeare’s The Tempest, used a great deal of its text, spoken characteristically and beautifully by John Gielgud.

An architect, an artist and a lover of the 17th century, Greenaway has presented the play as Masque of the time with its songs, its fairies and its magic.

He has also invented Renaissance books that Prospero might have had on his island and these structure the film.

There is a great deal more, two images of filling the screen. Perhaps that is too much – at least for one viewing.

It is a specialist film that will not appeal to the average audience. But there is an extraordinary richness in what he offers for eye, ear and for the mind and imagination. It is Shakespeare by way of Greenaway and Gielgud.

1. Impact of the film? Its demands? Vocal? Visual?

2. The work of Peter Greenaway? Baroque? A Masque of the 17th century? Action, screen borders, imagery and animation? Michael Nyman’s score?

3. The cast, John Gielgud and his voice, the gravity of his presence? The presentation of Caliban, Ariel? The purity of Miranda? The visitors to the island?

4. The Shakespearean basis, plot, dialogue?

5. Greenaway’s imagination, for example Ariel: a boy, adolescent, Acrobat, singer, the elements, earth, air, fire, water?

6. The physicality of the film, bodies, bodily functions, sexuality, nudity?

7. The books forming the framework and structure of the film:
A Book of Water
A Book of Mirrors
A Book of Mythologies
A Primer of the Small Stars
An Atlas Belonging to Orpheus
A Harsh Book of Geometry
The Book of Colours
The Vesalius Anatomy of Birth
An Alphabetical Inventory of the Dead
A Book of Travellers' Tales
The Book of the Earth
A Book of Architecture and Other Music
The Ninety-Two? Conceits of the Minotaur
The Book of Languages
End-plants
A Book of Love
A Bestiary of Past, Present and Future Animals
The Book of Utopias
The Book of Universal Cosmography
Lore of Ruins
The Autobiographies of Pasiphae and Semiramis
A Book of Motion
The Book of Games
Thirty- Six Plays