Coriolanus (2011)
Content by Tony Macklin. Originally published on February 5, 2012 @ tonymacklin.net.
Ralph Fiennes has created a slashing, sprawling version of Shakespere's Coriolanus.
It's muscular Shakespeare. It's trimmed down - but has themes and a sensibility that fit into today's society and world.
Coriolanus originally was set in 5th century B.C. Rome. Fiennes and screenwriter John Logan bring it forward to the 21st century to 'A Place Called Rome.' It was filmed in Serbia, which helps give it a timeless, alien, but contemporary feel.
Togas and swords are replaced by fatigues and automatic weapons. Killings are shown on television. Pundits discuss provocative issues. Politicians in suits spin their talking points.
A canny decision on the part of Fiennes and Logan was to start and end the movie with knives - a timeless, basic weapon. Coriolanus opens with a sequence of a shining knife blade being sharpened. We hear the scrape of steel. [It's Aufidius.] Coriolanus ends with a knife fight.
But Coriolanus is a mixed bag of knives - some sharp and some blunt. It cuts to the quick, but also slices and dices.
Screenwriter Logan, who also co-produced, is both sharp and blunt. He essentially retains Shakespeare's language and his rhythms. Logan deftly clarifies words, e.g., 'fouler' to 'falter,' and at times his rephrasing is apt, e.g., 'with him prevailed' becomes the more modern 'prevailed with him.'
But Logan's cutting gets the better of him and he chops. He is charged with cutting about half the original play, while retaining its heft.
Throughout most of the film, Fiennes and Logan successfully mix action with language. Until the last part - when Logan lops and chops and even slits Menenius's wrist - he seemed to exhibit a respect for the text. But at the end Shakespeare is trumped by action.
The final lines of the play are spoken by Tullus Aufidius about Coriolanus: "Yet he shall have a noble memory. Assist.' Nobility? Not in Logan's mind. Cut the nobility crap.
At least Logan is not doing Hamlet, or 'Good night, sweet prince' would be gone.
Aufidius's last line in the movie - 'let him die for't' is not even spoken by Aufidius in the play. It's a line spoken by the conspirators.
At the end, Shakespeare is rendered mute. Language is replaced by cries of pain, fluttering flags, a knife withdrawn from flesh, and finally the thump of a body thrown into the bed of a truck.
Who wants language, when you can end with a 'thump'?
Despite Logan's veering from the text, for most of the movie the actors are true to the language and deliver it with contemporary vitality.
Ralph Fiennes - often with blood-smeared head - is a strong, relentless Coriolanus.
Coriolanus is a warrior, a war-hero whom the tribunes want to trot out to impress the public. He is a military elitist - a precursor of Jack Nicholson's Col. Jessup in A Few Good Men (1992).
He rejects image politics. He is absolute in his pride in his war wounds - 27 scars - but he refuses to exploit them for public affirmation.
There is something appealing to voters in 2012 in Coriolanus's rigid adherence to principle. He has no regard for tradition or appeasement. His pride is inviolate. Coriolanus is not politically correct.
But Coriolanus has contempt for the common people - 'rabble.' He ferociously insults them.
'You are too absolute,' his mother Volumnia (Vanessa Redgrave) says to him. Tullus Aufidius (Gerard Butler) later says to Coriolanus, 'most absolute sir.'
Volumnia gives advice to her prideful son: 'I would dissemble.' Coriolanus refuses. But ultimately his mother's entreaties on behalf of Rome demean and thwart Coriolanus, and bring about his downfall.
Vanessa Redgrave, with glowing eyes, is lean and eloquent, as the willful, forceful mother. Gerard Butler is coolly intense as Coriolanus's adversary Tullus Aufidius. Jessica Chastain is appealing as the essentially gentle wife Virgilia.
Brian Cox stands out as the preening, spry, crafty politician Menenius.
The mob is less effective, but it has some contemporary resonance. One reviewer yelped as though the mob were marching to occupy the New York Post.
Lubna Azazbal, as the rebellious citizen Tamora, delivers several key lines for the mob, but she seems stagy and unconvincing.
Logan might have listened to the Lord who said at the end of Coriolanus, 'Tread not upon him.'
But despite lapses by the mob and screenwriter Logan's treading on Shakespeare, Coriolanus sustains its intensity.
Fiennes' Coriolanus is a thumping good tale.
