Tonight at 8 p.m., the Dryden will screen Prospero's Books (Peter Greenaway, U.K. 1991, 127 min., 35mm).

It would not be quite accurate to say that Prospero's Books is an "adaption" of William Shakespeare's The Tempest. Rather, Greenaway's film is a lively and deeply experimental reflection on the nature of reading and the materiality of books, using the Bard's final play as a point of departure. When a violent storm casts Prospero (John Gielgud) astray on an unidentified island, his vast library somehow survives with him. He resides in a state of limbo, somewhere between reading and writing, between life and death, and it is from this perpetual in-between state that Prospero's Books finds its footing. The written and spoken word constantly invades the space of the film, whether in the form of pages adrift in the mise-en-scène, frames of text embedded within the image, or Gielgud's magisterial voice. Like many of Greenaway's films, Prospero's Books is best experienced not as a narrative to follow but as a kind of literary fever dream to which one surrenders.

[source: Dryden website, 2015-May-18]