Produced as a part of PBS’ American Playhouse, an
independent producer of high-quality television films for first-time
filmmakers, Fool’s Fire is something of Julie Taymor’s entire
career in microcosm. There’s an obsession with using puppetry and masks, the
ostentatious imagery, the general sense of artistry that borders on the
pretentious and imaginative. There’s also that bubbling sense of
aggressive adaptations, a sense that everything must be included and played for
maximum effect when something smaller would clearly do.
Based on the Edgar Allen Poe story “Hop-Frog,” with the poems
“The Bells” and “A Dream Within a Dream” thrown in for good measure, Taymor
uses eccentric techniques to create a work of abstract wonder. Sometimes Fool’s
Fire is filled with too much wonder, and it tiptoes into esoteric
territories of beautiful images and hypnotic costuming proving too much of a
muchness. There can be such a thing as overly designing a film.
The basic story of “Hop-Frog” is followed very closely, with
relatively little added or removed, including the horrifying denouement where
the hero completes his transformation from victim to avenger. The choice to
leave Michael J. Anderson and Mireille Mosse uncovered by masks or elaborate
makeup and the rest of the players as asymmetrical puppets forces us into
identification with them and their suffering. It’s a unique and creative
choice, like many of Taymor’s, and it pays off well in the end.
Although other choices are slightly bewildering, like having
Trippetta forced to live in a birdcage or having her recite “A Dream Within a
Dream.” These moments feel like unnecessary distractions or too heavy-handed in
the point Taymor is trying to make about prejudice. I doubt anyone would ever
accuse Taymor of being prosaic, but sometimes dialing it back just a little
will do wonders for the bigger moments. Fool’s Fire is perhaps
too overstuffed with incident and imagery causing a strange cancellation
effect, as the smaller moments feel too slumberous and the larger ones start
feeling too theatrically synthetic. There’s a lot that’s tremendously good
about Fool’s Fire, but it also presents the weaknesses of Taymor’s
filmmaking style. In the end, Fool’s Fire is something of its
creator’s brain exploding across the celluloid, and it is magnificent and
convoluted to watch.
A filmed performance of Julie Taymor’s variation of the Igor
Stravinksy opera, Oedipus Rex originally aired as part of
PBS’ Great Performances series. If you’re still with me after
that introductory sentence, I suggest you seek this out for its artistic daring
and soaring theatricality. Some of the things that mar Taymor’s film work soar
when taken into the context of a proscenium arch and a live audience just
outside the frame.
Of course, something as expansive and gigantic as an opera was
built for Taymor’s artistic cross-pollination and cultural borrowings. A tale
of ancient Greece done for a Japanese festival with a heavy dose of Noh Theater
and exoskeletal puppets and sung in Latin, it sounds like a collision of
someone’s artistic obsessions and it very much plays as this. I doubt you’ve
ever seen a version of Oedipus Rex as deeply strange. The clockwork like infant
puppet of Oedipus that opens the show is a harbinger of the hallucinatory
aspects to come.
If there’s any knock I can give against Oedipus Rex it’s
simply that the camera placement occasionally undermines the drama as it
unfolds. With so much spectacle going on the detours away from the full view of
the stage hamper the impact. Of course, a few of these moments actually work
beautifully like a close-up of Philip Langridge that dims the lights across his
face before focusing in on his eyes. Too often though, the camera zooms in on a
performer’s face while the business of the dancers and moving parts of the
stage are ignored. Taken as a whole, this version of Oedipus Rex is
a haunting, beautiful, strange experience and well worth the journey.
William Shakespeare’s blood-soaked tragedy gets the aggressive
visualization treatment in Julie Taymor’s big screen debut. To watch Titus is
to discover a film that argues that the limit does not exist for what
constitutes “over the top.” This doesn’t just shake the rafters, nor does it
blow the roof off of the place, because there is no foundations for the film to
destroy. Titus is a film of uncompromising beauty,
sensationalism, and obnoxious pretentions, and it must be applauded for having
the courage to go beyond broke into something grander.
None of this is to say that Titus is an
entirely effective or even coherent whole. It’s very much not, but there are
moments of grand beauty that are equal to the moments of near camp or overly
zealous symbolic heft. The opening of the film, a young boy in a picturesque
1950s home playing war with his action figures and bits of food, is a harbinger
of things to come with this youth serving a multi-purpose function. This
innocent is supposed to be our witness to the carnage and depravity, but this
idea is half-formed and more distracting than anything. His eventual reveal as
Titus’ grandson and a supporting player in the action is something of a muted
response.
Taymor has said that this youth was symbolic, a silent,
observing symbol of the younger generations and their inheritance of violence,
war, and tension, but it doesn’t work. If Titus is supposed to
be something of a screed on the evils and perils of these things, then it
completely undermines that point with its addiction to aesthetic and
synesthetic overload. Titus practically licks its lips in its
various depictions of gore, and by keeping them so colorful and artfully
orchestrated, the audience is left at a remove from the realities and visceral
reactions of the vengeance.
There’s a certain reality that sinks in about Taymor’s work when
you watch Titus, and it is this: for all of her strengths in
creating visual splendor, she seems completely disengaged with narrative. The
faults of Titus as a play carry over to Titus as
a film, but a better director might have wrestled with the material in a more
satisfactory manner. The play contains no hero, no moral, just a series of
violent delights having violent ends. If Taymor wanted to call attention to the
audience’s consumptive tendencies of violence-as-entertainment, then perhaps
she should have dialed back on the series of ornate pageantry on display.
The rape and mutilation of Lavina (Laura Fraser) by Demetrius
(Matthew Rhys) and Chiron (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) is a perfect example of this
dichotomy. This moment should be an emotional reckoning where we as the
audience feel the terror and anguish that she suffers, but we don’t here.
Taymor has Fraser wear a deer’s head as a hat while Rhys and Meyers lunge and
transforming into tigers and cheesy heavy-metal rock music roars in the
background. This moment is all at once absolutely beautiful, completely
laughable in its lack of subtlety, and maddeningly literal in its destruction
of virginal innocence.
Where Titus and Taymor excel is in its
uniformly strong acting ensemble. Naturally, a player like Anthony Hopkins is
not a surprise in how well he sinks his chops into the Bard’s poetry. His
lilting Welsh tones caress the words so wonderfully that he can make Titus’
eventual dissent into mania and madness something quite elegiac. But it’s the
two American actors who provide the best performances. Jessica Lange gives one
of her great performances that depend on her ability to stop-and-start with
emotional alacrity. Lange’s Tamora, Queen of the Goths is a sleeper waiting for
the perfect time to burn everything down in revenge. Even better is Harry
Lennix as Aaron, one of the outsider players in a Shakespeare tragedy that is
slowly revealed as a major contributor to the destruction. Aaron is something
of an “angry black man” prototype, but Lennix tries to invest him with some
soul and understandable fury in his machinations and nearly pulls the trick
off.
Titus is a grand production that is worth the journey it takes
you on, even if the end results is a muddied, complicated imperfect work.
Taymor’s visual splendor keeps things continually interesting, even when it
contradicts or turns the play’s meanings and dialog prosaic. It’s an uneven but
good debut from an artist obsessed with using every multimedia tool she can get
her hands on to bring her ideas to life.
When Frida was
originally shopped around town in the 1980s, no one in Hollywood knew much
about the iconoclast artist Frida Kahlo. It was considered as a prestige
project for an actress like Meryl Streep or Jessica Lange, very obvious choices
for a proudly Mexican woman who wore the traditional garments of her culture.
Thankfully, these versions, including ones that nearly starred Laura San
Giacomo, Madonna, Marisa Tomei, and Jennifer Lopez, all failed or stalled out
in development hell and we were blessed with this passionate, fiery one.
Frida was the
dream project of star/producer Salma Hayek, and she spent the better part of
her earliest career chasing the various film productions and trying to star in
them. Eventually, through sheer determination, pluck, and smart career moves,
Hayek obtained the rights to Kahlo and Diego Rivera’s paintings, got Harvey
Weinstein and Miramax to purchase the rights, and chased down Alfred Molina and
Julie Taymor to co-star and direct. Hayek’s love and passion for the project is
palpable throughout, and she brings out strong work in all of her collaborators.
Yes, the film’s script is loaded with the problems
typical to any biopic, but Frida
works hard to overcome and garnish them. The film finds the direct lines of
autobiography in her art, and uses Kahlo’s famous statement about never
painting dreams or illusions but her own life as a way to wrestle with her work
and obsessions. Even better is how vibrant and heavily present the culture,
symbols, and textures of Mexico are in the film. Frida goes a long way towards adding considerable flavor to more
routine moments, even transforming a few sequences into grand surrealist
poetry.
Take the ways that Taymor utilizes about a dozen of
Kahlo’s more famous paintings and uses them demonstrate the emotional catharsis
or understanding of the artist. The harrowing sequence were Kahlo miscarries
ends with her sitting up in her hospital bed, emotionally placid, and painting
as a way to exorcise the pain and horror of what she’s just experienced. After
marrying Diego Rivera, Hayek and Molina are posed in a manner that directly
echoes her famous painting of the pair, and it functions are a moving wedding
photo. These are but a handful of the strange, oneiric moments where Kahlo
engages with her paintings, either by stepping directly into them or by
transitioning out of them.
I previously mentioned how Frida uses the culture of Mexico in deep and meaningful ways at
several points, and one of the most prominent comes very early in the film. The
bus accident that leaves Kahlo scarred and crippled for life transitions into a
stop-motion sequence from the Brothers Quay using Day of the Dead totems as
doctors reassembling her spine. It’s a nightmare turned absolutely beautiful in
the ways it positions us inside of Kahlo’s mindscape, and it uses the culture
of Mexico to add vibrancy and imagination to a terrifying moment. Even better
is the cameo from Chavela Vargas, one of Kahlo’s many lovers, belting out “La
Llorona” over a montage of Kahlo’s final days. This is a direct connection to
the artist, and turns Vargas and “La Llorona” into a siren call from
approaching death.
No story about Frida Kahlo would be complete or feasible
without also detailing aspects of Diego Rivera’s life. These two artists were
instrumental to each other during the peak period of their artistic and political
lives, acting as lovers, adversaries, champions, and kindred spirits. The
potential for actors to dig deep and provide several fireworks is written into
the lifeblood of the roles, but Hayek and Molina prefer to play it all real and
not as entombed icons.
This was Hayek’s “role of a lifetime,” and she excels at
every turn, from the bright schoolgirl to the tortured wife to the political
activist to the towering artist. Hayek finds the reality in every twist and
turn, and was rightly nominated for a slew of awards for her work here. Not
content with just starring in and acting as a midwife to the production, Hayek
even recreated some the paintings in the film. Frida was her chance to break out of the Latin sex bomb archetype
that Hollywood had encased her in, and her post-Frida career is far more interesting for the artistic cachet it
brought her.
Matching her every step of the way if Alfred Molina. He’s
her equal in every measure here, and he creates a Diego Rivera that is by turns
charming and a bastard. During her lifetime, Rivera was the well-known and
prominent artist, and Molina plays him as such, but also adds tender grace
notes that hint that he knew time would cause her work to eclipse his own.
Think of the scene where he stares at Kahlo’s notebook after having her feet
removed, and Molina’s face is one of pure love and sympathy, supportive and
empathetic. Where was the love for Molina’s performance during the awards
season? At least BAFTA, SAG, and a few critics groups were smart enough to throw
some nominations and accolades his way.
These two provide the anchor and support of the Frida, around which a small galaxy of
impressive visuals and big name guest stars orbit (ok, maybe Ashley Judd’s
cameo as Tina Modotti is an odd bum note). The cinematography is possessed with
bright greens, blues, and reds, the score by Elliott Goldenthal deservedly won
an Oscar, and the entire production is handsome as ever. Perhaps I’m too
enamored with Frida, I admit it has
faults, but I simply do not care. It dives into Kahlo’s psyche and gives us
many an incident and anecdote to tackle, many a glorious image to drink in, and
a pair of lives rich with passion and brains to marvel at.
In 2006, Julie Taymor directed this heavily truncated
version of Mozart’s famous opera, and the taming of the material leaves the
production slightly listless. Not only was a large chunk of material edited
out, but also much of it was changed to be more “family friendly.” The Magic Flute feels more akin to a
mammoth Disney super-production than the original, more aggressively strange
work.
If nothing else, The
Magic Flute is another visually audacious and beautiful production from
Taymor. All of her hallmarks are here: puppetry, masks, ornate costuming,
purposefully anachronistic sets, and rear-projection. The cumulative effect is
a full-scale assault on the senses, and Taymor’s gifts for visualizing and
imagining are best in a theatrical context. If any material can survive her
roof-blowing antics then it’s an opera, something that already demands are
certain largeness of scale and proportion.
The fanciful aspects of the production are emphasized
here, and it does make for a certain briskness and entertaining value. However,
this does leave The Magic Flute incoherent
and with a general effect of too much spectacle in service of a thin story. I blame
the edits that removed much of the sub-plots involving Pamina and the Three
Boys. Given how sharp or atonal the actors playing the Three Boys are
throughout, maybe it’s for the best their parts were dwindled down.
For the most part the actors play their roles quite well,
with all of them but one singing their faces off to an impressive degree. Nathan
Gunn steals the show here, throwing himself into his role with exuberance and
joyous hammy theatrics that play well in the opera house, your mileage may very
since the camera is more intimate. But the lead role as played by Matthew
Polenzani is problematic at best. He sings perfectly well, but he seems lost
amid all of the spectacle and awkward in projecting for the stage.
Overall this is a solid production, handsome and lively,
but it lacks a certain brio. There’s a chance you too will be befuddled by the
hastiness we’re rocketed through the story with. The Magic Flute is another case of Taymor’s vision sacrificing narrative
clarity or quiet moments. Her vision is laudable, but her inability to modulate
is exhaustive.
Who needs a plot when you can arrange 33 songs by the
Beatles in random order and have a series of talented performers do them in a
bunch of loosely connected music videos revue style? This is very similar to Mamma Mia, a hastily assembled collage
of memorable pop tunes lacking a memorable or even serviceable story. There’s
also the triteness of Forrest Gump,
our small band of youths just so happen to take part in every single major
movement and moment of the turbulent 60s.
Across the Universe
is only as good as any singular moment since there’s not a clichéd story that
Taymor doesn’t use, nor is there a character that exists beyond a mere sketch.
Hell, most of these characters feel like they’re named or brought in just to
provide an excuse for another song. There’s our leads Jude and Lucy, Max,
Sadie, Prudence, and a nearly uncountable number of groan inducing puns and
references. Well, thank god for the soundtrack at the very least.
Like many of Taymor’s film, Across the Universe is both aggressively literal-minded and a
potent example of ambition exceeding execution. The chaos of Prudence wandering
through football practice while singing “I Want to Hold Your Hand” is a nifty
idea, until you realize that it doesn’t look anything like football practice
but very heavily choreographed dancing. While a bowl of strawberries is the
inspiration for, ugh, do I even have to finish this sentence? You damn well
know what song it is.
What’s shocking is how many of the sequences demonstrate
Taymor modulating her artistic impulses. “It Won’t Be Long” works for the
pop-rock girlishness and joy that Evan Rachel Wood invests into it. While “I’ve
Just Seen a Face” primarily takes place in a bowling alley and effectively
visualizes the thrill of falling in love and “Helter Skelter” uses simplistic
special effects and Dana Fuchs’ throat-shredding howl to maximum effect. The
best of these moments is “Let It Be,” which contrasts race riots with the
Vietnam War, takes the gospel underpinnings of the track and dials them up to
eleven. It’s a moment of deeply felt emotional honesty and rawness, a moment
that Across the Universe could have
used more of.
These provide a nice counter-balance to the moments where
Taymor goes full-throttle visually audacious. “Being for the Benefit of Mr.
Kite” is a psychedelic collage of puppetry, vintage circus advertisements, and
asymmetrical perspectives. Oh, and Eddie Izzard cameos as Mr. Kite leading a
dance troupe of Blue Meanies from Yellow
Submarine. “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” finds Uncle Sam, G.I. Joes, and
newly drafted young men carrying the Statue of Liberty across a clearly
artificial Vietnam jungle in a politically loaded sequence. Then there’s
“Happiness is a Warm Gun,” performed in a hospital with a multiplying Salma
Hayek dressed as a sexy nurse. These moments stand out for the right reasons,
and work just as effectively as short films in their own right.
The actors are valiant throughout, performing all of
their songs with conviction and holding their own against a series of guest
stars. Joe Cocker, one of the great interpreters of the Beatles, shows up in a
triptych of performances during “Come Together,” it’s cute and fun to see him
having fun with the classic. Bono proves a bit distracting as Dr. Robert during
“I Am the Walrus,” mainly for the strange speaking voice he adopts and hammy
acting. It’s a pity that Dana Fuchs and Martin Luther McCoy aren’t given enough
to perform, despite being clearly brought in to act as proxies for Janis Joplin
and a hybrid of Marvin Gaye and Jimi Hendrix, they have the best musical chops
out of the major players. Jim Sturgess, Joe Anderson, and Evan Rachel Wood are
all uniformly solid, and all of them display strong singing voices. The entire
cast harmonizes beautifully on “Because,” “Dear Prudence,” and “All You Need Is
Love.”
Taymor is too idiosyncratic of an artist to leave Across the Universe totally unsuccessful
as an exercise, but not enough of the material engages with the songs in any
meaningful way. She clearly had a lot of ideas about how to visual them, and it
is audacious in its grand ambitions. But ambition can only go so far when it’s
tethered to so much silliness and excessive style. Taymor is a visionary
artist, but I wonder if she knows how to pivot her considerable gifts and
never-ending imagination for the more intimate style that filmmaking provides.
“We are such stuff as dreams are made on/And our little
life is rounded with a sleep.”
Julie Taymor’s reading of The Tempest is heavy on the dreams, but light on the second half’s
understanding of eventual surrender and quietness. The Tempest is an elegy and a humbling, and the play is one of the
richest in both characters and visuals in William Shakespeare’s canon. It’s a
damn shame then that Taymor took so much of it literal, fails to modulate her
admittedly fervent imagination, and seems completely at odds with the poetic
acceptance of mortality.
Taymor’s The
Tempest doesn’t just fail to go quietly into the dying light, it doesn’t
just rage against it, but goes completely unhinged at every opportunity. Credit
must be given for the boldness of her vision, commitment to seeing it through,
and moments of grand beauty, but they cannot smooth over the numerous problems
of tone and performance. The same problems that plagued Titus plague this Shakespearean run-through, but the major
difference is that Titus could
contain a persistent tone of extremity much better than this golden sunset.
Sometimes less is really more, and a little bit less of
Taymor’s incessant visualizations would go a long way towards taming this
thing. Frenzied is the best descriptor of it. Maybe on stage this exact
production would work better, but the intimacy of the camera makes the
grandiosities assaulting and overbearing to so delicate a work. Even worse is
how often the special effects work looks half-finished or just downright
terrible. Several instances of rear projection are clearly artificial, and CGI
hellhounds are just embarrassingly terrible.
Then there’s the curious case of Ariel in this
production. Ariel is a sprite, and Taymor’s decision to paint Ben Whishaw
ghostly white and make him translucent and consistently leaving a ghostly trail
behind his movement is beautiful. The choice to have Whishaw naked and prone to
developing breasts and long hair at random moments is just…well, a bit
overheated, like so much of the film. Yet Whishaw’s performance is magical,
ethereal, and tender in equal measure. He’s wise to underplay so much of the
part and makes smart choices about where and when to go big, like a scene where
Ariel appears as a terrifying harpy.
There’s also the unique and smart choice to cast Caliban
as a symbol of colonialism’s horrific stain, but Djimon Hounsou never gets the
chance to invest tragedy into the part. Taymor sets up a smart idea for
Caliban, then does nothing with it and leaves him playing second-fiddle to the
two clowns of the piece. Those clowns are played by Alfred Molina, great as
always, and Russell Brand, who is surprisingly effective with the language and
holds his own in a fairly strong company of actors.
But Hounsou isn’t the only fine actor giving an awkward
performance here. Chris Cooper just wasn’t made for Shakespeare I suppose, or
perhaps he just wasn’t made for this particular part. Meanwhile, David
Strathairn, Tom Conti, Alan Cumming, and Felicity Jones are doing their best
with limited screen-time or limited acting partners. The long absences of
Strathairn, Cumming, and Conti are practically criminal. Jones’ love scenes
with Reeve Carney are limp things primarily because Carney is achingly
beautiful to look at, but completely miscast for Shakespeare given how
awkwardly he handles what little dialog they left for him to recite.
As any adaptation of The
Tempest is meant to do, Helen Mirren dominates this one in the
gender-swapped role of Prospera. Surprisingly, very little changes to the
source material by flipping the central role around this way, but Mirren gives
a knockout of a performance. Of course, Mirren acing Shakespeare is a given,
but she plays a full range of emotions here with commitment and tenderness. Her
relationship with Ariel is richer here, as Mirren treats Ariel more as a
companion and less as a servant. She nurtures the part and rides it into the
big finish with a soulful demonstration and a smashing of her magical scepter.
The Tempest is
a garden of good ideas without someone to nurture them into blossoming. Too
many images and costuming call attention to themselves, too many choices make
promises that the film cannot keep. There’s some lovely performances, a couple
of tremendously exciting visual stimuli, and a lot of aiming for the highest
peak even when a moment doesn’t require it.
My Essential
Viewing recommendations:
Fool’s Fire
Great Performances:
Oedipus Rex
Frida
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