Review: Coriolanus (15) ****
The 15 producers’ names on the credits of Ralph Fiennes’s Coriolanus hint at the difficulty in funding and delivering modern-dress Shakespearian films in this age of comic book movies.
Like 1996’s Richard III, set in an unnamed 1930s fascist dictatorship, Coriolanus is placed courageously in modern day Rome with Ralph Fiennes and Gerard Butler as the sworn enemies tearing the country apart.
And therein lies the rub. Purists may howl when they see what 21st-century influences have done to the Bard’s vision. Yet one has to applaud Fiennes, writer John Logan and the impressive cast – Vanessa Redgrave, John Kani, James Nesbitt, Jessica Chastain, Brian Cox and even Channel 4’s Jon Snow (I kid you not) – for daring to haul this tale of honour, betrayal and death from ancient Rome to a war-torn modern equivalent.
A shaven-headed Fiennes plays Caius Martius – later Coriolanus – as the ultimate career soldier, a man bound by inflexible mores of conduct in war and politics, which he enters reluctantly. Prodded into the political arena he finds himself out-manoeuvred by rivals and even his own mother, Volumnia (Redgrave). Banished as an outcast, he eventually locates Tullus Aufidius (Butler), his nemesis, whom he joins to march on the land that cast him aside.
Its content is as violent and venal as anything that may have taken place in those far-off Roman days and Fiennes’s interpretation brings such conflict to bloody life with conviction.
The difficulty in attracting a wide audience to such a production is the choice of play. Not for Fiennes the familiarity of a Hamlet, Othello or Richard III. Instead he has opted to reinvent a little-seen piece of theatre with himself as the central iconic figure – a man who ricochets from hero to villain, incapable of denying his inner fire and consequently falling foul of those to whom dissembling and manipulation is de rigueur. Fiennes, in the showiest part, scythes through the action and emerges as the ultimate loser. But the scene in which, as the victor, he is confronted and shamed by his mother, lingers long in the memory.
A laudable attempt – if not entirely a triumph.
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Saturday 26 May 2012
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jillkennedy78
Friday, January 20, 2012 at 07:49 PMOh yes - I cannot wait to see this movie! It looks spot on - like a really great war movie. Here is a hilarious review of the movie from a Finnish film critic (who also has much praise for it)... http:mankabros.comblogsbtp20120120coriolanus-review
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