Coriolanus Reviews

It’s an odd mixture from the start. It grafts one of Shakespeare’s lesser known (and, in general, lesser) works to a movie that’s trying to recapture some of the artistry and brains of The Hurt Locker. That is never quite succeeds is obvious, that it even dared is admirable, that it is Ralph Fiennes first directorial effort is remarkable.

Shakespeare is a hard beast to handle for any director, be they modernized adaptations or accurate to the play’s setting. It requires a certain amount of pacing and rhythm, and finding actors who can find the musicality within the language and not fuck it up. Kenneth Branagh keeps getting toted as the modern day Shakespearean adaptor, but his movies are flawed works. (Can we not discuss Keanu Reeves’ performance in Much Ado About Nothing?) Julie Taymor’s Titus was a radical takeoff and succeeded more than it failed, and had an artist with a bold, singular and unique vision and voice behind it.

But what does this have to do with Coriolanus? Quite simply, this has more to do with Taymor’s reinventions than with Branagh’s star-studded and inert adaptations. The modern-day warfare setting actually works fairly well with the storyline, since Fiennes never tries to push any agenda or strain the parallels and allegories too far. Instead he just lets the text wrap itself around the setting, and it mostly proves that the “more things change the more they stay the same” platitude.

But the insistence on rapid-fire editing and handheld shaky camera movements throughout the film prove more distracting and distancing from the material than anything else. When the camera is allowed to form a coherent image, framing the actors and settings and observing as they scheme and speechify, it becomes electrically alive. The magic of Shakespeare is the dialog, and very rarely is it the business going on around it.

But Fiennes does wisely assemble a game cast filled with both heavyweights and unexpected choices. Gerard Butler, seemingly sacrificing his earlier career choices for two acting modes – rom-com uncouth bastard or action-film belter constantly speaking from his well-oiled and defined chest, here proves to be a delight. He never truly finds the right groove of the language and his performance is not as polished as it would or should be, but he acquits himself very well and proves surprisingly nuanced and effective. Jessica Chastain and Brian Cox are, of course, wonderful in their roles. But who would expect anything less from those two?

Coriolanus though is truly a two-actor showcase. Vanessa Redgrave as Volumina, Coriolanus’ mother, is a scheming yet loyal, power-hungry yet rational contradictory presence seeking to usher her son into the consulship in which she will be a phantom puppet string manipulator. And Fiennes in the title role proves, once more, that he is one of the most underrated and undervalued actors currently working. His shaved head, battle scars and permanent sneer when not in the battlefield quickly essay a man who is not at peace if he isn’t causing bloodshed. He has no love or time or patience for political games, instead believing that his various militaristic accomplishments prove his worth. He is ultimately undone by his disdain for the general populace and his inability to put on a happy front and deliver sound bites and perform tap-dance routines for the public to consume. His performance shows us that perhaps this man is both a perpetuator of crimes and brutality and the victim of a different kind of brutality and criminality. The movie itself may be messy and chaotic, but it has enough merits to be worth a look.