There are those who look at Peter Greenaway's work as high art or stimulating intellectual exercise.
And it could just be me, I suppose. But I've never been able to get into Greenaway's films.
From my perspective, "The Draughtsman's Contract" was pretty but empty. "The Belly of an Architect" was overbaked and underwhelming. And I couldn't even bring myself to take in "The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover" after reading about some of the film's more disgusting and very explicit scenes.
The one thing these films seem to have in common is that all are quite pretentious and much ado about nothing.
But that description is an amazing understatement when applied to "Prospero's Books," Greenaway's adaptation of Shakespeare's "The Tempest."
Sir John Gielgud, in rare form (even at 87), is Prospero, the play's central figure, here reeling off Shakespeare's words in a seemingly endless monologue while Greenaway parades a variety of imagery before the audience. The three things most common to this redundant parade of elements are water, books and nude people, men and women.
The water — swimming pools, rivers, rain and a little boy urinating — fills the screen and the soundtrack. The books are shown as educational tools describing various industrial or environmental concerns, with voice-over description. And the nudity is everywhere, as men and women carry props, come in and out of scenes, etc.
Some of the audience — especially since the film, playing at a suburban mall theater, could attract unsuspecting mainstream moviegoers — may be shocked by the amount of full frontal nudity shown in this R-rated film. But none of it is sexual, and after awhile all of it is extremely boring.
To liven things up, Greenaway indulges in split-screen techniques, high-definition video scenes superimposed over the screen's central action and any number of strange, anachronistic moments that seem off-the-cuff, if not altogether superfluous.
How about that boy in the swing, urinating a stream while swinging toward the camera. (I was so grateful the film wasn't in 3-D.) Or the nude pregnant woman who peels the skin from her stomach to reveal her internal organs (and the fetus).
All of this is very weird, to say the least, but there will no doubt be those who will defend this film as art. To me it was merely irritating and utterly incomprehensible. (I walked out before it was over.)
Listening to Gielgud reading the "The Tempest" from an audio tape and watching Saturday morning cartoons with the sound down would have had the same effect.
"Prospero's Books" is rated R for considerable nudity, as well as some violence and gore.