The Tempest | 
| Director: Derek Jarman
Actors: Peter Bull, David Meyer, Neil Cunningham, Heathcote Williams, Toyah Willcox
Studio: Kino Video
Category: DVD
List Price: $29.95
Buy New: $16.41
You Save: $13.54 (45%)
New (9) Used (7) Collectible (1) from $13.79
Rating:  15 reviews
Sales Rank: 20269
Format: Color, Dvd, Ntsc
Language: English (Original Language)
Rating: R (Restricted)
Region: 0
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
DVD Layers: 1
DVD Sides: 1
Picture Format: Academy Ratio
Number Of Discs: 1
Running Time: 95 Minutes
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.3
Dimensions (in): 7.5 x 5.3 x 0.6
MPN: KICD01472D
ISBN: 6305739862
UPC: 738329014728
EAN: 9786305739869
ASIN: 6305739862
Theatrical Release Date: 1979
Release Date: April 10, 2000
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Shot on location at the ancient and ghostly stoneleigh abbey the tempest tells the story of prospero the magician who lives with his nubile daughter on an enchanted island and punishes his enemies when they are shipwrecked there. Its a study of sexual and political power in the guise of a fairy tale. Studio: Kino International Release Date: 02/22/2000 Run time: 95 minutes Rating: Nr Director: Derek Jarman
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| Customer Reviews: Read 10 more reviews...
 Jarman's Tempest December 9, 2008
Elizabeth Burdick (Honolulu, Hawaii)
I will be teaching this play for a community college crowd next semester. I think it will work for that - more straightforward and less nudity than "Prospero's Books."
 The most boring movie that is made from a Shakespearean play. August 29, 2008
M. White (Savannah, GA USA)
This is just boring. It lacks excitement and is just a poor adaptation of the play. I read the play before watching this movie and some of the funniest parts are not realized becuase the actors and the sound and the location do not make it interesting. I would not suggest anyone watch this ever. This is as bad as Caligula.
 Jarman's Tempest.... August 5, 2008
Grigory's Girl (NYC)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This is one of the most unique adaptations of Shakespeare, and one of Derek Jarman's best films. It's a very stripped down version of Shakespeare's last play. If you're looking for a realistic, stridently faithful adaptation, look elsewhere. It's not here. Jarman is one of the best British filmmakers ever (and one of the most unknown, which is a bloody shame), and his literary adaptations are entirely his own. The Tempest, Caravaggio, and Edward II take place in the past, but there are always modern touches which alienate some of the audience, but dazzle others. This is a great example of Jarman's filmmaking.
The film is very spooky, cerebral, austere (probably because of budget limitations), yet it's intensely watchable. It has great performances by all (including many Jarman regulars), beautiful, startling cinemtography, and wonderful atmosphere. It was shot almost exclusively in an abandoned abbey, where Jarman and the crew essentially lived as they shot the film. The film, while slow at times, builds up a great tension until the finale, when Jarman indulges himself wonderfully and has the wedding party of Miranda and her suitor. There are sailors everywhere, petal flowers flowing, and Elizabeth Welch singing a beautiful rendition of Stormy Weather. It's one of Jarman's best scenes ever, and ending the film in this manner is a masterstroke.
The DVD by Kino Video is quite good. It includes the original press kit and three fascinating short films by Jarman, A Jounrey to Avebury, Garden of Luxor, and Art of Mirrors (the best of the three). They are all silent, but they are still great to watch, especially if you're a Jarman fan. If you admire Derek Jarman, or if you wish to see one of the most unique adaptations of Shakespeare ever, check this film out. It's really something.
A Moody Gothic and Lusty Tempest June 15, 2007
Doug Anderson (Miami Beach, Florida United States)
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
This is a very strong re-imagining of Shakespeare's Tempest. Like Ken Russell (with whom Jarman served as an apprentice on a number of films), Jarman has a natural interest in and affinity for English history & literature and an equal interest in and affinity for camp which is skeptical of and often parodies traditions that it nonethless adheres to and upholds. As much of an iconoclast as Ken Russell and Derek Jarman seem to be they never stray far from the acknowledged masterpieces of literature and the way these masterpieces orient us toward the world; what they add, however, is an element of camp (or play, or polymorphous perversion, or myriad-mindedness) which draws attention to the restrictions that class and gender and race place on individuals or social actors "playing" at any given time in history. But this is, of course, what the greatest literature has always done--shown the arbitrary bounds and laws by which men and women delimit their lives. In this way the greatest literature has always been iconoclastic and Russell and Jarman fit into English tradition as well as Shakespeare and Marlowe, Byron and Shelley, Lawrence and Woolf.
In Jarman's production there is little left of the once great Prospero but a desire to be avenged. In his mind the world wronged him and he will not be at peace with it until he sets it right again. The irony is that in seeking to set the world aright he enslaves others (Ariel and Caliban) and simply perpetuates the chain of wrongdoing that he is trying to break. The tragedy of the play is that Prospero knows that despite his efforts he really cannot make men act against their natures and that despite brief lapses of peace (occasioned by art) men will always resume their contest for power. But like many of Shakespeare's plays this is not wholly a tragedy nor wholly a comedy and so one moment we may be, along with Ariel, lamenting mans tragic fate and the next minute, along with Ariel, laughing at it. Most productions of The Tempest seem to favor either the tragic or comic element, but what Jarman does is not imbue the entire play with one mood but imbue individual characters with one or another, comic or tragic, mood. So while Prospero is imbued with a brooding & wistful melancholy that is wholly appropriate to his age and experience, his daughter Miranda is imbued with a sense of possibility and wonder that is wholly appropriate to her age and experience. The beauty of the play is that each character really inhabits their own version of the island, and lives within their own desires (or fears, for one could argue that what Caliban really fears is not having someone to serve for this would mean taking responsibility for his own reality). Of course some people might be put off by the fact that Jarman also allows each character to have their own sexuality. The campy ending, I might add, just underlines the unbridgable gulf that exists between art (where man experiences a measure of freedom and joy) and life (where man must live according to the decorums of the state.
Jarman's eccentric cast works very well at bringing to life Shakespeare's characters and themes and enlivening them with Jarman's visual style. If Ken Russell was the perfect artist of the early 1970's in that he seemed to glorify in the fashionable excess of the age, then Jarman is perhaps the perfect late seventies/early eighties artist that seems to glorify in the excesses of character and sexuality while also realizing that those excesses/eccentricities are allowed only in the world of art and that society as a whole is not that permissive or playful. This would explain the paradoxical melancholy of Jarman's artist-angels-visionaries; they are transcendent creatures but they are, nonethless, always trapped in society and in time.
The DVD includes three silent bonus shorts from 1971, 1972, & 1973 respectively. They are art student pieces that reveal the visionary yearnings of this essentially romantic and thus eternally melancholy artist.
 Are you people MORONS? January 16, 2007
I am The Reviewer (California)
5 out of 9 found this review helpful
OMG! The folks who didn't "like" the film clearly had no idea who (or what) Derek Jarman is. Crickey, do a little research before buying something. What did you think, this was going to be some high-school production of Shakespeare? The boobs and the corset on the cover shoulda tipped you off (or perhaps that's why you bought it... hmm). What a bunch of morons.
OK, now that's over with...
If you dig Jarmen, this is for you. Much more cohesive than Caravaggio (I mean, c'mon... look at the source material). It engages, just hide the kids eyes!
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