Film Review: Coriolanus (Fiennes, 2011)

Ralph Fiennes’s Coriolanus gets its UK release this coming weekend. I had the pleasure of seeing the film at the London Film Festival last year, and it made my Top 10 Films of 2011 list, just. Here’s what I wrote about it after the LFF screening.

Seldom regarded as one of Shakespeare’s most profound or popular tragedies, Coriolanus is a work that has, nonetheless, frequently been raided for contemporary parallels by directors and adaptors across the centuries. The play’s slippery dissection of democracy - its concern with “people power,” the challenges of leadership and what constitutes “good” rule - has left it open to multiple, often contradictory interpretations. Nahum Tate’s 1682 adaptation was set against Whig-Tory rivalry, while later adaptations referred to the 1715 and 1745 Jacobite Rebellions. In the 20th Century, the Nazis extolled the heroism of the protagonist and drew favourable comparisons with Hitler, while Brecht’s 1953 version surprised no-one by portraying the masses as heroes.

Ralph Fiennes’s big, brawny new film adaptation strives - sometimes astutely and sometimes ham-fistedly - to chime with the times. The tale of the warrior-hero who, when conspired against, turns his back on Rome to join forces with his arch-enemy, the Volscian general Aufidius, is the tragedy of a man who, though a notable success on the battle-field, is entirely unable to flatter or charm the populace. Tipping its hat to the title of John Osborne’s 1973 adaptation, Fiennes’s film locates the action in “a place calling itself Rome” - a Balkan war-zone - and the early scenes in which the citizens besiege the Senate and are beaten back by riot-police certainly gain an extra frisson in the light of recent uprisings and anti-capitalist demos.

Making his directorial debut here, Fiennes has done a mostly commendable job of work. And returning to a role that he first played on stage in 2000, he also delivers a compelling central performance that has genuine gravitas. But his approach sometimes betrays a certain amount of insecurity in relation to the material. The film strives so hard to be cinematic - jittery camera-work? check; ear-splitting sound? check - that it’s occasionally a little embarrassing. The opening scenes suggest a particularly hyperbolic advert for a Panorama Special, and the decision to present the conflict between the Romans and the Volscians through the language of TV news media (yawn) feels all too predictable. (How fresh this device seemed when it book-ended Baz Lurhrmann’s 1996 Romeo + Juliet; how totally shop-worn now. The nadir here is a Jon Snow cameo.) As director, Fiennes also seems to have taken instruction from some of his previous collaborators: the over-wrought action scenes find him doing his best Kathryn Bigelow impersonation (Barry Ackroyd, who shot The Hurt Locker [2008], is the movie’s cinematographer), while the presentation of the Citizens as a very motley crew recalls the 2005 Deborah Warner production of Julius Caesar in which Fiennes played Mark Antony.

This tendency towards over-emphasis does result in admirably lucid story-telling, though. The film is thoughtfully paced and structured, with Coriolanus’s rejection of Rome taking place almost exactly at the movie’s mid-point. Hollywood’s favourite screenwriter-for-hire John Logan has done a skilful job of paring back (and simplifying) the text, although some elements and supporting roles do suffer the consequences of his tinkering. While Brian Cox is able to come through with a finely modulated performance as Menenius, the work of Paul Jesson and James Nesbitt as the conspiring Tribunes ends up seeming obvious at times. And, more problematically, the association between Coriolanus and Aufidius (Gerard Butler, adequate) never quite strikes the sparks that it initially promises to. The homoerotic implications of the relationship which have been highlighted by some directors aren’t stressed here, although the movie does boast a slightly bizarre night-time sequence in which the Volscian camp seems momentarily to have morphed into a gay club.

The most genuinely exciting moments are those in which Fiennes stops proclaiming “Look! I’m making a MOVIE!” and opts for more sparsely staged scenes that allow Shakespeare’s language to do the work. Coriolanus then offers some memorably taut encounters, and some eloquent and expressive images, too. Fiennes’s scenes with Vanessa Redgrave’s strong, seductive Volumnia are especially fine; Redgrave (who gave even her hokey dialogue in Letters to Juliet [2010] the weight she might give to a spot of prime Shakespearean verse) delivers her best screen performance in years as the ambitious, manipulative matriarch. And she and Fiennes look wonderful together - a pair of Roman statues in the making, indeed - their intense close-ups offering the thrill that the theatre can’t provide. Volumnia’s final supplication scene is brilliantly sustained - the movie’s highlight - and its impact mitigates some of the more questionable, obvious ideas that mar the film’s opening sections. This Coriolanus isn’t, overall, everything that it could have been. But at its best it’s a vivid and gripping account of this now seldom-staged play.

Review of 2011: Cinema - 10 Favourite Films

Cinema-memories, 2011.

Texan boyhoods. Parisian chimes at midnight. The end of the world. On Tresco, a painter gives a young man some advice. In Nottingham, two men meet, connect, part. Somewhere, a wedding reception goes off the rails. A Roman hero in a Balkan warzone. A novel use for Viagra. A mother and daughter ponder loss. A portly fantasist turns up in someone else’s fantasy. A waiting cat gets philosophical. Christophe Honoré goes p*rn... Not quite a movie year to match 2010 for me, but, even so, 2011 offered some incredible cinema experiences, many of which demonstrated film’s ability to encompass the domestic and the cosmic as no other medium can do.

                                                         Archipelago (dir. Joanna Hogg)

Joanna Hogg’s tender, funny chamber drama, revealing under-the-surface tensions (and under-the-surface love) on a family vacation on Tresco, makes most other films this year look heavy-handed and overstated by comparison. Beautiful work from Tom Hiddleston, Kate Fahy, Lydia Leonard, Amy Lloyd and Christopher Baker. 

                                                      Weekend (dir. Andrew Haigh)

Well, here’s a surprise. Not one but two British films ending up on this year’s list... Haigh’s Nottingham-set boy-meets-boy romance is perfectly scaled, beautifully observed, brilliantly acted, and convincing in every detail.

                                                        Elena (dir. Andrei Zvyagintsev)

Oh boy. My favourite film of the London Film Festival was Zvyagintsev’s third movie, a subtle but bracingly intense drama that explores issues of class and social status in contemporary Russia through the story of the title character (brilliantly played by Nadezhda Markina). A Tarkovsky for those of us who (confession time) have been bored by the majority of Tarkovsky’s work, Zvyagintsev is as philosophically-inclined as his illustrious predecessor but without losing sight of character and narrative. Elena is a marvellously assured piece of filmmaking: beautifully rhythmed, rich in unstressed details, and full of spaces for the viewer’s involvement and interpretation.

                                                    A Separation (dir. Asghar Farhadi)

I don’t know anyone who didn’t love and admire this: Farhadi’s splendid, complex drama seemed to grip and involve everyone who saw it.

                                                    Melancholia (dir. Lars von Trier)

It’s the end of the world as they know it. And Lars’s characters feel… well, not exactly fine.

                                                 The Tree of Life (dir. Terrence Malick)

As divisive as Melancholia. Sure, “that” montage is a chore and the ending is soggy. But Malick’s grandiose evolution opus has the most wonderful stretches: piercingly evocative scenes of Texan boyhood that strike many deep chords. Risible at its most expansive, then, but singularly affecting at its most personal and intimate.

                                                     Midnight in Paris (dir. Woody Allen)

At which American audiences finally renewed their love affair with Woody Allen. And indeed who could resist Allen’s completely charming and generous-spirited time-travel comedy, a valentine to Paris, an ode to living in the now? Less loved, Allen’s You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger (2010), which got its British release this year, also had its merits, not least a lovely performance from Gemma Jones.

                                                        The Future (dir. Miranda July)

A few very inventive and original movies emerged from America this year, among them Miranda July’s The Future, a brilliant meditation on time that made me exclaim an enthralled “Wow!” on two occasions.

                                                        Dark Horse (dir. Todd Solondz)

Toning down the misanthropy and the shock value a notch Todd Solondz produced in Dark Horse one of his most involving and resonant films, one that follows its portly protagonist into a very odd liaison - and even further into his even odder fantasy life. Its narration unravelling as the protagonist unravels, Dark Horse takes some wonderfully confounding twists and turns as it progresses, culminating in an exquisite  final shot. And few filmmakers can match Solondz’s unnerving ability to capture the sheer awkwardness of human interaction on screen.

Coriolanus (dir. Ralph Fiennes)

And wait a minute ... is that a third British film on the list? Ralph Fiennes’s big ‘n’ brawny adaptation of one of Shakespeare’s least-loved tragedies doesn’t win many points for subtlety. But it's still one of the most memorable Shakespeare adaptations seen in many a year.

Honourable mentions and 2010 releases not seen until this year:

Rabbit Hole, True Grit, Homme Au Bain, A Simple Life, Li and the Poet, Bal, A Screaming Man, Farewell, Animal Kingdom, Potiche 



Film Review: Coriolanus (Fiennes, 2011) @ the London Film Festival

Seldom regarded as one of Shakespeare’s most profound or popular tragedies, Coriolanus is a work that has, nonetheless, frequently been raided for contemporary parallels by directors and adaptors across the centuries. The play’s slippery dissection of democracy - its concern with “people power,” the challenges of leadership and what constitutes “good” rule - has left it open to multiple, often contradictory interpretations. Nahum Tate’s 1682 adaptation was set against Whig-Tory rivalry, while later adaptations referred to the 1715 and 1745 Jacobite Rebellions. In the 20th Century, the Nazis extolled the heroism of the protagonist and drew favourable comparisons with Hitler, while Brecht’s 1953 version surprised no-one by portraying the masses as heroes.

Ralph Fiennes’s big, brawny new film adaptation strives - sometimes astutely and sometimes ham-fistedly - to chime with the times. The tale of the warrior-hero who, when conspired against, turns his back on Rome to join forces with his arch-enemy, the Volscian general Aufidius, is the tragedy of a man who, though a notable success on the battle-field, is entirely unable to flatter or charm the populace. Tipping its hat to the title of John Osborne’s 1973 adaptation, Fiennes’s film locates the action in “a place calling itself Rome” - a Balkan war-zone - and the early scenes in which the citizens besiege the Senate and are beaten back by riot-police certainly gain an extra frisson in the light of the London riots and current worldwide anti-capitalist demos.

Making his directorial debut here, Fiennes has done a mostly commendable job of work. And returning to a role that he first played on stage in 2000, he also delivers a compelling central performance that has genuine gravitas. But his approach sometimes betrays a certain amount of insecurity in relation to the material. The film strives so hard to be cinematic - jittery camera-work? check; ear-splitting sound? check - that it’s occasionally a little embarrassing. The opening scenes suggest a particularly hyperbolic advert for a Panorama Special, and the decision to present the conflict between the Romans and the Volscians through the language of TV news media (yawn) feels all too predictable. (How fresh this device seemed when it book-ended Baz Lurhrmann’s 1996 Romeo + Juliet; how totally shopworn now. The nadir here is a Jon Snow cameo.) As director, Fiennes also seems to have taken instruction from some of his previous collaborators: the over-wrought action scenes find him doing his best Kathryn Bigelow impersonation (Barry Ackroyd, who shot The Hurt Locker [2008], is the movie’s cinematographer), while the presentation of the Citizens as a very motley crew recalls the 2005 Deborah Warner production of Julius Caesar in which Fiennes played Mark Antony.

This tendency towards over-emphasis does result in admirably lucid story-telling, though. The film is thoughtfully paced and structured, with Coriolanus’s rejection of Rome taking place almost exactly at the movie’s mid-point. Hollywood’s favourite screenwriter-for-hire John Logan has done a skilful job of paring back (and simplifying) the text, although some elements and supporting roles do suffer the consequences of his tinkering. While Brian Cox is able to come through with a finely modulated performance as Menenius, the work of Paul Jesson and James Nesbitt as the conspiring tribunes ends up seeming obvious at times. And, more problematically, the association between Coriolanus and Aufidius (Gerard Butler, adequate) never quite strikes the sparks that it initially promises to. The homoerotic implications of the relationship which have been highlighted by some directors aren’t stressed here, although the movie does boast a slightly bizarre night-time sequence in which the Volscian camp seems momentarily to have morphed into a gay club.

The most genuinely exciting moments are those in which Fiennes stops proclaiming “Look! I’m making a MOVIE!” and opts for more sparsely staged scenes that allow Shakespeare’s language to do the work. Coriolanus then offers some memorably taut encounters, and some eloquent and expressive images, too. Fiennes’s scenes with Vanessa Redgrave’s strong, seductive Volumnia are especially fine; Redgrave (who gave even her hokey dialogue in Letters to Juliet [2010] the weight she might give to a bit of prime Shakespearean verse) delivers her best screen performance in years as the ambitious, manipulative matriarch. And she and Fiennes look wonderful together - a pair of Roman statues in the making, indeed - their intense close-ups offering the thrill that the theatre can’t provide. Volumnia’s final supplication scene is brilliantly sustained - the movie’s highlight - and its impact mitigates some of the more questionable, obvious ideas that mar the film’s opening sections. This Coriolanus isn’t, overall, everything that it could have been. But at its best it’s a vivid and gripping account of this now seldom-staged play.