Whatever else you might say about Prospero's Books, it is certainly original. Despite its being based on the Shakespeare play "The Tempest".
Like the play, the movie posits some kind of unnatural or supernatural power residing in the books in question; but the movie takes a stab at just what these books might have contained, and so considers them more as books in the traditional sense--as founts of knowledge that can impart, to the capable reader, newfound powers--than as what they represent in the plays, a repository for magical spells.
Thus it is postulated that in addition to their use in prayer and for amusement, books may yield powers of an immediate kind--powers beyond those available through the knowledge of oral traditions, say. This can perhaps be construed as a schema for science fiction; but such an interpretation is new with Greenaway's work.
I found the ubiquitous nudity distracting for the first ten or fifteen minutes, but quickly became used to it. It is effective in creating an atmosphere--indeed, as an Edinburgh Film Society review notes, "the sheer volume of naked flesh on display is almost surreal." I think it was surreal; I think that was the point, in part at least. To characterize this as pornography is to be terminally clueless.
The other common complaint about this film, that it is pretentious, will depend entirely on whether you think it has been successful in giving us a remarkably fresh reinterpretation of Shakespeare. I think it has been, though the last half-hour dragged a bit.
Like the play, the movie posits some kind of unnatural or supernatural power residing in the books in question; but the movie takes a stab at just what these books might have contained, and so considers them more as books in the traditional sense--as founts of knowledge that can impart, to the capable reader, newfound powers--than as what they represent in the plays, a repository for magical spells.
Thus it is postulated that in addition to their use in prayer and for amusement, books may yield powers of an immediate kind--powers beyond those available through the knowledge of oral traditions, say. This can perhaps be construed as a schema for science fiction; but such an interpretation is new with Greenaway's work.
I found the ubiquitous nudity distracting for the first ten or fifteen minutes, but quickly became used to it. It is effective in creating an atmosphere--indeed, as an Edinburgh Film Society review notes, "the sheer volume of naked flesh on display is almost surreal." I think it was surreal; I think that was the point, in part at least. To characterize this as pornography is to be terminally clueless.
The other common complaint about this film, that it is pretentious, will depend entirely on whether you think it has been successful in giving us a remarkably fresh reinterpretation of Shakespeare. I think it has been, though the last half-hour dragged a bit.