"Every third thought will be my grave." Unreviews: "The Debt" and "The Tempest"

[hawkwing_lb]

"The Debt" is a strange and compelling film starring Helen Mirren and Jessica Chastain. Beautifully shot, with a solid performance from Dame Helen as retired Mossad agent Rachel Singer, and excellent performances from Jessica Chastain (as the younger Rachel Singer) and Jesper Christensen (as Nazi war criminal Dieter Vogel), it works best in its 1960s scenes of East Berlin, with psychologically real, tense, claustrophic drama. Viewed as a whole, though the film never quite coheres: I would have liked, at least, to feel more emotional investment in Helen Mirren's older Singer.


"The Tempest" is strange, compelling, and utterly gorgeous. Julie Taymour's screen adaptation of Shakespeare's final play stars Helen Mirren as Prospera, the exiled Duchess of Milan, and Felicity Jones as her daughter Miranda. Djimon Hounsou plays Caliban, and Ben Whishaw's Ariel is playfully, occasionally creepily, spirit-like. The rest of the cast is likewise excellent.

But Helen Mirren is the star of the show. She should play arrogant manipulative superheroes more often, because she's fantastic at it.

Really. Helen Mirren. Go watch it.

Comments

[helivoy.livejournal.com]

The first time I ever saw Helen Mirren, she also played an arrogant manipulative superhero and was fantastic there as well, despite the film's and myth's arrant misogny (Morgana in Excalibur). She has never been anything short of amazing down the years. It was her role in The Tempest, and the opinions on it, that led to my article As Weak as Women's Magic (http://crossedgenres.com/archives/028-superhero/as-weak-as-womens-magic-by-athena-andreadis/). I agree that The Debt was uneven but compelling -- beyond Mirren's usual excellence, Chastain, Csokas and Christensen were terrific, Wilkinson and Hinds as reliable as ever, and they even coaxed a good performance out of Worthington.

[hawkwing-lb.livejournal.com]

Ah, I remember that LeGuin thing. Alas. (I would love to see Queen Lear or Queen Henrietta.)

I think Worthington can act. Given sufficient motivation. But really, Mirren and Chastain? Brilliant.