MOVIE REVIEW : A Dizzying Approach to ‘The Tempest’

Oh, somewhere in this favored land, the sun is shining bright. The band is playing somewhere, and somewhere hearts are light. And somewhere men are laughing, and somewhere children shout.

In Los Angeles, however, “Prospero’s Books” opens today at the Nuart and the Peninsula.

In all truth, writer-director Peter Greenaway’s latest epic of obfuscation is not all that bad. It is certainly an improvement of sorts over his last picture, the critically lionized “The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover,” which was enough of a gleeful and thoroughgoing assault on the senses to become a major success d’estime. This time around, Greenaway has been content with merely being seriously tedious, not to mention enough of a puzzler to make the Coen Brothers at their most mystifying look as obvious as “Ernest Scared Stupid.”

As advertised, “Prospero’s Books” is based on “The Tempest,” Shakespeare’s last completed play, which has itself been the basis of several films, including the memorable science-fiction sweetheart “Forbidden Planet.” But Greenaway, in his thankfully inimitable way, has so worked the basic story over that unless you are intimately familiar with the original, the goings on in “Prospero’s Books” will be close to a total mystery. (In an attempt to rectify this, Miramax, the film’s distributor, has decided to add a crawl to the beginning of the film, and will be handing out helpful synopses at the theater door.)

The intimidating Prospero is the protagonist of both play and film. Once Duke of Milan, he was overthrown by his brother Antonio, escaping to a distant isle with only his daughter Miranda and “from mine own library . . . volumes that I prize above my dukedom.” Once on the island, helped by the books, Prospero becomes a wizard of major proportions.

Greenaway’s point of departure from the play is intriguing, but, like most of this film, only comprehensible if explained in advance. While Shakespeare has a storm blow a ship carrying the wicked Antonio and his confederate Alonso, the King of Naples, onto Prospero’s island some dozen years later, Greenaway has Prospero merely imagine all this is happening. But, given that he is such a powerful magician, everything that takes place in his mind also happens right before our eyes.

Because Prospero is imagining it all, Sir John Gielgud, the actor who plays him, gets to recite everybody’s lines. If there was anyone you’d want reciting the entire play, Gielgud, a Shakespearean actor without peer, would be your man, but it is also true that that conceit makes the play’s action harder to follow. And the complex, convoluted way Greenaway has staged it leads to the conclusion that the director would be truly horrified if anyone did manage to understand what was on his mind.

Clearly it is not words that are on Greenaway’s mind, but images. Lots and lots of images, things like hordes of unclothed actors incomprehensibly painted blue and indolently wandering around what looks like an abandoned madhouse. Working with cinematographer Sacha Vierny and using the very latest in film and video technology, Greenaway has so layered the film with visual extravagances that the result is not only confusing but numbing, like being force-fed a round-the-clock banquet of nothing but the richest of desserts.

If circumstances find you watching “Prospero’s Books” (rated R for pervasive nudity) much against your will, there is one thing to look forward to, and that is the books themselves. Greenaway has gone Shakespeare one better by coming up with names and characteristics for the volumes, things like “An Atlas Belonging to Orpheus,” described as having maps “scorched and charred by Hell-fire and marked with the teeth-bites of Cerberus,” and his technicians have very winsomely brought them to life.

Equally welcome is the fact that the books are numbered from 1 to 24, and by keeping your eye on the numerals you can get some clue as to how much more of the accompanying tedium you have to endure. This may sound like a small favor, but in the user-unfriendly work of Peter Greenaway you soon learn to be grateful for even the smallest of crumbs.

‘Prospero’s Books’

John Gielgud: Prospero

Michael Clark: Caliban

Michael Blanc: Alonso

Erland Josephson: Gonzalo

Isabelle Pasco: Miranda

An Allarts-Cinea/Camera One-Penta co-production, released by Miramax. Director Peter Greenaway. Producer Kees Kasander. Executive producers Kees Kasander, Denis Wigman. Screenplay Greenaway, from “The Tempest” by William Shakespeare. Cinematographer Sacha Vierny. Editor Marina Bodbyl. Music Michael Nyman. Production design Ben Van Os, Jan Roelfs. Set decorators Ben Zuydwijk, Rick Overberg, Wendy Valentijn. Running time: 2 hours.

MPAA-rated R (pervasive nudity).