The Tempest epitomizes my favorite flavor of Shakespeare adaptation: lean, revisionist, and minimalistic (a musical number or two notwithstanding). Like Orson Welles, director Derek Jarman takes numerous liberties with the text, omitting and rearranging various iconic lines, interactions, and even entire soliloquies. Rather than slavishly adhering to every letter of the source material, he instead emphasizes the imagery (film is, after all, a visual medium)—which is absolutely magnificent.
The setting is particularly impressive. Stoneleigh Abbey is the ideal stage for this supernatural tale; its claustrophobic corridors and shadowy chambers lend it an atmosphere akin to a haunted house—for is that not precisely what it is? The foreboding, ominous space perfectly complements our protagonist’s tormented psyche, reflecting his loneliness, his resentment, his vengeful wrath—making his internal conflict feel that much more intimate and urgent. The audience is trapped in this nightmarish prison alongside him, forced to experience every excruciating moment of his insanity-inducing exile, isolation, and alienation.
Thus, much like Chimes at Midnight before it, The Tempest is an inherently cinematic interpretation of The Bard’s theatrical source material—and I savored every moody, painterly frame of it.
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