I've long defended director Julie Taymor from detractors who accuse her of sacrificing substance for spectacle. Titus (1999) may have been eye candy but it was also a fairly brutal, if not the most brutal, depiction of a Shakespeare play I had ever seen onscreen. And Frida, a film about the painful life of Mexican artist Frida Kahlo which wonderfully incorporated the Latin magical realism tradition amply demonstrated throughout the painter's work, was one of the best pictures of 2002. I guess the rumblings about Taymor's style began around the time Across the Universe (2007) came out, which I just chalked up to the film being a sort of trifle celebrating the music of The Beatles. Too bad I can't speak directly to it since I missed that film, but I feel like I understand some of this criticism now that I've seen The Tempest.
