Wednesday, February 4, 2009

O Brave New World: Nim's Island as The Tempest

Nim’s Island. Dir. Jennifer Flackett and Mark Levin. Perf. Abigail Breslin, Jodie Foster, and Gerard Butler. 2008. DVD. Twentieth Century Fox, 2008.

Some time ago, I argued that the film version of Nim's Island is a [very] loose retelling of The Tempest.

Now I have more substantial evidence to back up that claim.

Observe what happens when Nim, uncertain whether the boy who has wandered away from a group of tourists into the interior of her island is real or not, recognizes that he's as real as she is:

                                                          O, wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world,
That has such people in't! (V.i.182-85)
Nim is Miranda.  That's all there is to it.

The original claim (and Wendy Orr's comments) can be found elsewhere on this blog.

Links: Official site for the movie

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Shakespeare, William. The Riverside Shakespeare. 2nd ed. Gen. ed. G. Blakemore Evans. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997.
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The very instant that I saw you did / My heart fly to your service; there resides, / To make me slave to it; and, for your sake, / Am I this patient [b]log-man.

—The Tempest