Prospero's Books (1991)
Average Rating: 5.9/10
Reviews Counted: 24
Fresh: 16 | Rotten: 8
There is no middle ground for viewers of Peter Greenaway's work, but for his fans, Prospero's Books is reliably daring.
Average Rating: 5.6/10
Critic Reviews: 8
Fresh: 5 | Rotten: 3
There is no middle ground for viewers of Peter Greenaway's work, but for his fans, Prospero's Books is reliably daring.
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Average Rating: 3.9/5
User Ratings: 3,885
My Rating
Movie Info
Puzzle-master Peter Greenaway exposes another aspect of his peculiar obsessions to the filmgoing public. Prospero's Books uses Shakespeare as a foundation and then skips along to define its own lush territory. The books of the title are briefly referenced in The Tempest -- Prospero is a magician who gets to keep only a small fragment of his enormous library when he is exiled with his daughter to an enchanted island. In the film, Prospero is played by Sir John Gielgud. Indeed, everybody is voiced
Sep 28, 1991 Wide
Oct 22, 1992
Cast
-
John Gielgud
Prospero -
Michael Clark
Caliban -
Michel Blanc
Alonso -
Erland Josephson
Gonzalo -
Isabelle Pasco
Miranda -
Tom Bell
Antonio -
Kenneth Cranham
Sebastian -
Mark Rylance
Ferdinand -
Gerard Thoolen
Adrian -
Pierre Bokma
Francisco -
Jim van der Woude
Trinculo -
Michiel Romeyn
Stephano -
Orpheo
Ariel -
Russell Paul Batty
Ariel -
James Thierree
Ariel -
Emil Wolk
Ariel -
Marie Angel
Iris -
Deborah Conway
Juno -
Ute Lemper
Cory -
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All Critics (24) | Top Critics (8) | Fresh (16) | Rotten (8)
The product of a feverish, overflowing imagination, this almost impossibly dense take on The Tempest displays both the director's audacious brilliance and lewd extravagance at full tilt.
Top CriticGone is any sense of drama or character; the cluttered spectacle yields no overriding design but simply disconnected MTV-like conceits or mini-ideas every three seconds.
To some degree, the relentless proliferation of ideas smothers the dramatic highs and lows, but this is a minor quibble compared to the sheer ambition and audacity of the overall conception.
Greenaway is not a frivolous film maker. He doesn't shoot a lot of material with the expectation of stumbling upon a found object within. His films are planned from the first frame to the last.
Greenaway bombards you with images, with no regard for the average attention span. Is he a genius or a fake? Debating that question is almost as stimulating as watching a Greenaway film.
Prospero's Books references the masterpieces of the past in a manner that antagonizes our pleasure in the arts rather than enhancing it.
Does it work? That depends on whether you find Greenaway's elaborate visual conceits and rarified narrative structures daring and liberating, or boringly self-indulgent.
Lubricious biblophilia rubbing up against a warehouse of naked extras, this Shakespearean adaptation is, in many ways, the epitome of cinematic pretension.
It cries out to not only be heard but be seen for what it wishes to convey about the act of creativity.
Gielgud's voice has the ability to put you right to sleep with its bass and monotone timbre. The good news is that when you wake up, you won't have missed a thing.
There's nothing quite like it in all of cinema -- and that's either a very good thing, or a very perplexing one, depending on how you feel about Greenaway's work.
This is a fantasy film that does a great deal that is new but one I cannot recommend without strong reservations.
It's not concerned with anything but being hypnotic and using film's plastic elements to its extremes, or at least as far as Greenaway can take it.
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Foreign Titles
- Los libros de Próspero (ES)
