the washington post friday, december 17, 2010 l


26 EZ


THETEMPEST


A dream cast imprisoned


BY MICHAEL O’SULLIVAN From one perspective, filmmaker Julie


Taymor’s “The Tempest” is a kind of high- brow “Harry Potter” film. Stuffed with unimpeachable performances by some of Britain’s most interesting actors — Helen Mirren, Alfred Molina, Tom Conti, Alan Cumming, Russell Brand, Ben Whishaw, Felicity Jones and others—and boasting a plot that’s heavy on the magical shenani- gans, this pretty and poetic adaptation of Shakespeare’s play is a fantasia for the smart set, a literary novelty for anyonewho wants to have fun without giving up food for thought. On that score, at least, it delivers, in spades. More’s the pity, then, that it doesn’t feel


verymuchlike a movie. It opens with a shot of a storm-tossed ship at sea that looks like it was filmed in a splash pool, with pails of water being tossed from just off camera. Taymor, of course, made her mark in


theater, with wildly original stagings of such spectacles as “The Lion King.” Her specialty is puppetry, with performers playing, say, giraffes in such a way that you see both the actor and the animal at the same time. So it’s no surprise that “The Tempest”—


which famously features both an incorpo- real sprite, Ariel, and a hideous monster, Caliban — calls its otherworldly creatures


MELINDA SUE GORDON/COPYRIGHT TEMPEST PRODUCTION


HelenMirren, left, with Felicity Jones and DjimonHounsou, is Prospera, a female version of Shakespeare’s noble turned wizard in “The Tempest.” Despite theHawaiian backdrop, the movie doesn’t expand upon the stage version of the play.


into being not with CGI but with heavy theatrical makeup and dancelike move- ment. As Caliban, whom the Bard described as


“not honour’d with a human shape,” the Benin-born Djimon Hounsou is a kind of mud-caked primitive. The brown-skinned character is very much human, however, whichlends the filma subtle (andsomewhat distracting) racial subtext, considering Cali- ban’smistreatmentat thehandsof theother- wise all-white cast. Similarly,Whishaw’sAri- el — a role that calls for the character to materialize and then vaporize periodically, not to mention perform much of the play’s magic — is rendered as a kind of androgy- nous punk pixie.With his thickly gelled hair, all-white body paint and little else, he comes across like anaked streetmime. They’re great character designs . . . for


the stage. On screen, they end up making the movie feel smaller and more claustro- phobic than it should, despite it’s photoge- nic, big-as-all-outdoorsHawaiian setting.


On the plus side? The play’s poetry,


which here takes center stage, and rightly so. Boasting some of Shakespeare’s most beautiful language, “The Tempest” more than survives Taymor’s tinkering with the text. That’s thanks in no small measure to


Mirren, as the exiled Italian noblewoman- turned-wizard Prospera (a part that’s nor- mally played by a man). From her opening scene, in which she conjures up a storm at sea in order to punish those who betrayed her, to her ultimate forgiveness of her enemies, Mirren tears into both the fero- cious and the tender sides of the part. It makesonewonderwhy the role isn’t played by a woman more often. The gender rever- sal lends especially rich new layers of meaning to Prospera’s relationship with her daughter,Miranda (Jones). Brand and Molina also make indelible impressions as buffoonish drunkards Trinculo and Steph- ano. “The Tempest” has always been one of


Shakespeare’s trickiest plays thematically. Its dual themes of revenge and reconcilia- tion almost cancel each other out. More than anything else, however, it’s also a play about playing.Near the end,Mirren gets to deliver her character’s most famous speech, the one about how “We are such stuff as dreams are made on.” It’s a remind- er to the audience that they’ve justwatched a mind game, and indeed that life itself is just a dream. Given the staginess of Taymor’s stub-


bornly uncinematic tale, it’s an unneces- sary reminder. Most plays-turned-movies try to open things up. Taymor still thinks like a theater director, ending up with a “Tempest” that takes place in a teapot. osullivanm@washpost.com


r½


PG-13. At Landmark’s Bethesda Row Cinema. Contains nudity, suggestive material and frightening images. 110 minutes.


BHUTTO


As complicated as her life was


BY MICHAEL O’SULLIVAN The documentary “Bhutto” is ostensibly


a biography of Pakistani leader Benazir Bhutto. In 1988, at the age of 35, she not only became the youngest prime minister of a majority-Muslim state, but the first woman to hold that position. Duane Baughman and Johnny O’Hara’s meticu- lously researched and largely sympathetic film opens with Bhutto’s 2007 return to her homeland after a career marred by corrup- tion accusations, imprisonment and exile. It was a return that quickly turned ugly when she was assassinated in a still-un- solved crime that many believe was en- abled, if not engineered, by the govern- ment of then-President PervezMusharraf. The tragic story that “Bhutto” ultimately


tells, however, is a lot bigger than even its namesake. At times, it’s almost too big for


its own good. Though a captivating subject in her


own right, Bhutto periodically disap- pears from the narrative entirely. After the film’s explosive opening, it back- tracks to the 1947 creation of Pakistan, in what is known as the Partition of India into separateMuslimandHindu states. It thenmoves forward, inch by painstaking inch, through 60 years of Pakistani histo- ry. The first politically active Bhutto to be discussed is not, in fact, Benazir, but her father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who served as president and then prime minister of Pakistan from1971 to 1977. Context, of course, is important. And the


movie has plenty of it. At times, some of the the little tidbits the filmmakers include suggest fodder for another whole movie or two. For instance: In the context of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan one inter- viewee states, almost in passing, that the textbooks used in Pakistani madrassas, or religious schools — where many of today’s jihadists are cultivated — were designed and printed by theUniversity ofNebraska. AsPeter Galbraith, the formerU.S. depu-


ty special representative to Afghanistan, tells the camera, “We thought that defeat- ing the SovietUnion was so important that we didn’t care that we were actually sup-


1997 PHOTO SAEED KHAN/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE VIA GETTY IMAGES


Former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto was a polarizing figure.


porting Osama bin Laden and people who were his allies.” It’s heavy stuff, but I digress. So does the


film. As distracting as some of these subplots


may seem, they are in fact integral to the understanding of Bhutto and the reforms that she hoped to accomplish. In an archival interview, Bhutto observes that the rise of madrassas might never have happenedif thePakistani governmenthad been able to provide a decent education for its own children. Yeah, it’s complicated. Bhutto was a polarizing figure, revered and reviled with almost equal passion. And while Baugh- man and O’Hara generally cast their sub- ject in the most favorable light, they do include interviews with Bhutto’s niece Fatima, who blames her aunt for the murders of two of Benazir’s brothers, including Fatima’s father. Like the Kenne- dy clan, with whom the Bhuttos are often compared,assassination follows this fami- ly like a curse. For those who can follow the movie’s


twisted personal and political path, how- ever, “Bhutto” is an exhaustive, if some- times exhausting, look at a larger-than-life figure.


osullivanm@washpost.com rr


Unrated. At Landmark’s E Street Cinema. Contains some violent news footage and discussion of assassination. 111 minutes.


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68  |  Page 69  |  Page 70  |  Page 71  |  Page 72  |  Page 73  |  Page 74  |  Page 75  |  Page 76  |  Page 77  |  Page 78  |  Page 79  |  Page 80  |  Page 81  |  Page 82  |  Page 83  |  Page 84  |  Page 85  |  Page 86  |  Page 87  |  Page 88  |  Page 89  |  Page 90  |  Page 91  |  Page 92  |  Page 93  |  Page 94  |  Page 95  |  Page 96  |  Page 97  |  Page 98  |  Page 99  |  Page 100  |  Page 101  |  Page 102  |  Page 103  |  Page 104  |  Page 105  |  Page 106  |  Page 107  |  Page 108  |  Page 109  |  Page 110  |  Page 111  |  Page 112