Film

Prometheus (1998)

Director: Tony Harrison

Movie review

From Time Out Film Guide

This ciné-poem is locked in the tradition of the poet-playwright Tony Harrison's TV work, with a creaky, old-fashioned feel to the visuals and a slight over-earnestness of performance that distracts from the 'message' - the despoliation of the environment, our misuse of the gift of technology and the imperative need for us to wake up to our power to change things for the better by co-operation rather than competition. In this free-form modernisation of Aeschylus's Prometheus Unbound, Feast's Hermes ('spin-doctor' of Zeus) scorns human futility and frailty in endless rhyming couplets, as the golden 'souls' of Yorkshire miners are smelted in Germany, before a 30ft gold statue of Prometheus is driven through Eastern Europe to its combustion in Greece. There's pleasure to be had in the dexterity, humour and robustness of the prose, but as drama, it's turgid.

---

• 
•