Tempest (1982): The Greatest Movie of All Time
(or the first 2/3rds anyway)
By the time I was 20 I had already seen enough movies that if somebody asked me to recite a top ten list of favorites I thought the exercise goofy. Which is to say that I know proclaiming something as the best of anything is inherently ridiculous, but this is what I like about it. If this article was simply to expose you to a movie you’ve probably never seen (which, to be fair, it mostly is) there wouldn’t be enough real work for me to do. Look, there’s the movie’s jacket cover. It’s starring husband and wife team John Cassavetes and Gena Rowlands. It introduces Molly Ringwald to the world. Raul Julia has the charm and innocence to turn the creepy Callabanos into a comic character of its own class.
Job done. Now you’ll either watch it or you wont. But if you’ll allow me to engage with my conceit I think I can make my argument even more compelling.
The first problem of course is deciding what criteria a movie must fulfill to be considered the greatest. Movies don’t have stats like the sports do. Or they have a variant on that which we call box office receipts. Though I think we can dismiss this metric pretty quickly as a measurement of greatness, since, and this may sound petty, but those movies have already got their just deserts. I think the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie fulfills all the criteria for a good summer blockbuster — and maybe in a sense that is what one could mean by greatness. The subjective criteria are too numerous to discount movies lots of people have seen and almost all like. So that’s a problem. One that I can only seem to get around by getting personal.
I can’t think of any other movie I would make this greatness argument for. Schindler’s List is certainly a powerful narrative, but it wouldn’t even come close. I love vonTrier’s work but his stuff is too esoterically specific for terminology like “best” to even come into consideration. Wild Strawberries, Goodfellas, 8&1/2 — these are good films. I might consider making arguments for Lost in Translation and All That Jazz, but I’m not and though I have reasons for not (Lost in Translation is a slice of life independent style film with only a hint at narrative and All That Jazz is musical which puts it in a smaller category for the films ever made) these reasons are not so important.
And if I’m going to take this argument at all seriously I’d have to concede that I have gaps of knowledge. I’ve certainly seen more Chinese and Thai and Spanish cinema than your average English speaker but I’m far from completely literate. There could be a movie that one might consider best that I simply haven’t seen.
Perhaps by now you’ve noticed that I like pursuing the idea of greatness more than telling you what that might mean. Well, it’s about time I rectify that. Here I start with the obvious — Shakespeare’s original play. Now The Tempest may not be one of his oft produced plays, but by most measures of greatness Shakespeare has certainly lasted the test of time. Maybe too much so (as I thought as an undergrad). But there’s no one who really compares when it comes to theatrical presentation of humanity. This is to say; if you’re basing your script off of one of the most thematically true writers in English — you’ve already got a leg up on other movies. Not only in terms of quality craftsmanship, since certainly there have been movies made based on Shakespeare which are not all that great; but one gains the ability to communicate story through an established story that many are already familiar with. As far as I’m aware that’s what Shakespeare was doing too.
Not that they play this up too much in Tempest (1982). They take the bones of the story and modernize it. It’s a well written film, but not so well written that the language takes over any given scene. Now you don’t know me but my girlfriend would tell you that this sounds like a contradiction coming out of my mouth. I believe writers of novels should get so philosophical and highfalutin that, as Milan Kundera said, “we should aspire to write books untranslatable to film.” I often prefer a kind of wordyness that sacrifices reality for poignancy. Sacrifices plot as well. Yet when one sees the work of a high caliber actor like Cassavetes — I wouldn’t doubt our director (Paul Mazursky) was tripping over himself to get out of the way.
Now, what should go next in this essay is a biography of John Cassavetes. Since if you don’t know about him or his work and you’re into film you definitely should. But suffice to say that in 1982 I personally feel there wasn’t a better working male lead. Yes, in large part my argument about the greatness of Tempest is an argument for Cassavetes being the best male actor of all time. Obviously Daniel Day Lewis is totally exceptional as well; along with Philip Hoffman and Joaquin Phoenix (that Paul Thomas Anderson knows how to pick ’em) but none of these actors really produced and directed their own films the way Cassavetes did, familiarizing himself with all the facets of a films creation. Cassavetes had an exceptional roguish streak that plays well into his character in Tempest. There’s this great clip of him getting frustrated with the American viewing public when he argues (quite rightly) that his film Opening Night is as good as anything they’ll see in theaters. Shortly after this is when he decides to act in Tempest. He gets to give up a chunk of the control and just act. And how his energy spills into the performance is at least on par with Day Lewis.
Though, to be real, his characters often haven’t had the same variety as pure professional actors. As he says in Opening Night, “I’ve got a deeply cynical face.” Cassavetes got plenty of work in classic Hollywood but always as a character actor with something approximating a cynical side to his personality. But it is this exact knowledge about himself and his career that find its ultimate expression in the world weary Prospero (Phillip).
The worst parts of Tempest (1982) are the thunderclaps of its storms, its loud plot pushing elements. This is because the subtlety of its mornings and quiet moments are so finely performed a clash of symbols sounds incongruous. I really do think of it as a movie of mornings — a time of day underrepresented in the history of film. And if one of the qualities of greatness has to do with presenting a side of life that’s often ignored Tempest checks that box.
Let us once again return to that silly notion of greatest of all time. Here are your basic limitations for a movie. Approximate 2hrs running time. What, exactly, you are trying to do with the scope of your film. I’ll admit that I think it’s impossible to be the best movie and have a giant budget. Now your movie has too many separate working parts, too many points for failure. Yes there’s something exceptional about it, like watching one of NASA’s old rockets take off for space. But you know this spectacle is essentially exclusionary. 99.9% of people are never going to get to be astronauts. So what could such a spectacle ever tell you about your life?
Yet there should still be some level of aspiration. Not an exact diagnosis of how to live, there lies folly, but (most) film can’t resist the beauty of presentation. Colors and framing — if a filmmaker doesn’t at least bump shoulders with beauty you know they are doing this on purpose (Korine, Waters). But such ugliness manifests itself in ugliness in the characters themselves. A good movie should have flawed characters, they should even have suspect motivations — yet there should be something in their kindness or grace or resolve or intelligence that seems tangible and true.
Yes, perhaps here I am slipping into the realm of the obvious — but it is not such a simple thing to involve this complexity with superior acting, framing and context.
Context seems to be the most fascinating aspect to look at in our current juncture. I don’t have anything to say about 1982 being a particularly good year for film, however, I think it was involved in the Crescendo of film. Do I think people will continue to make great movies? Certainly. In the past two decades we’ve seen some heavy contenders for G.O.A.T. I’m going to resist my urge to make a list, because as I’ve said the whole idea is preposterous (I continue as an intellectual exercise). There’s a scene from Tempest that may help me make my point.
Gena Rowlands’ character plays an actor. Arguably her talents are underutilized in the film but there’s a scene where she’s having a party with some producers. One of them has brought their 21 year old son who sits on the window sill, judging the older people. He asks one of the producers when he’s going to do something risky and alternative, “why don’t you do a Pinter or Pirandello, something that’s not so safe?” The old-hat of a producer rejoins with, “listen my darling; I’ve taken more chances on and off Broadway than any producer in New York. And I’ve lost more money than other producer doing it too.”
This is funny and true (if you’ve attempted to be an artist you’ve certainly been in the hole more often than not). But what resonates with me most is the use of Names. Pinter, Pirandello. These days I’d challenge anyone to try and say who are the names in alternative theater. Even if you worked in that side of the business (theater production) the marketplace is far too saturated for any 21 year old to have a sense of what risky theater would even be. Now this could go down a completely different rabbit hole that I’m interested in — namely that the 20th Century was a special time to be an artist — but suffice to say that in terms of conception for this essay: I believe we can rule out the immediate future as a place that will produce anything like greatness.
I’d also argue that this is probably a good thing. The art has gotten more personal while the bigger budgets have gotten bigger. What I’m arguing then is that there’s a certain level of — call it luck, call it work, call it the interplay of the Hollywood system — that will simply never be surpassed. If anyone struggled this year to find new movies to watch they certainly were not thinking very laterally. The vault of the past is chalked full of gems still waiting for you to metaphorically dig up.
But it is precisely this limitation of our present moment which can give us pause to examine the history of the medium as a whole. If “the medium is the message”, then what has that message been? Not just as individual films, but the way a movie like Tempest takes a classical artifact and creates its own artifact. I don’t think anyone could make a better movie based on Shakespeare’s The Tempest. I’d argue Tempest (1982) is the best Shakespeare movie ever made because it takes the story and defines it in its own cinematic terms. Terms that give a nod to the theatrical essence while making it something completely new.
And it’s got Susan Sarandon in her prime wearing a wet t-shirt. Pillory me for sexism if you like, but if that had been Brigitte Bardot there wouldn’t have been a man on Earth at the time who wouldn’t have seen it. Ending on a joke? Why not. I told you at the beginning this was gonna be silly.
