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Coriolanus (2010)

Director: Ralph Fiennes

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Movie review

From Time Out London

Long ranked as one of the least accessible entries in the Shakespearean canon, ‘Coriolanus’ arrives on the big screen for the first time in this ferocious twenty-first-century interpretation marking Ralph Fiennes’s directorial debut. While the play’s saga of political leadership at odds with the populace is set in Roman times, the film unfolds in a modern city still called Rome, but shot in Belgrade and drawing on the visual iconography of recent Balkan conflicts – all grey combat fatigues, suffering civilians and rolling satellite news. As always, when the Bard’s transposed in such a way, the game is partly about how far the makers can push the modernity, yet thanks to ‘The Aviator’ screenwriter John Logan’s guiding hand, the smartphone-shot assassinations and audience-baiting TV debates stay on the agreeably witty side of incongruous.

The key, though, is that the themes still feel relevant: Fiennes’s eponymous general is just the man to save the city from Gerard Butler’s Aufidius and his Volscian assault force, yet clearly not equipped to deal with the political machinations of peacetime. Coriolanus may be driven by noble ideals, but he regards the public with barely concealed patrician scorn. As such, this isn’t a piece to warm to, but Fiennes the performer attacks it with such vivid urgency we reluctantly forgo a certain emotional resonance. As a director, he doesn’t quite pull off the faux-Paul Greengrass vérité of the modern urban warfare sequences (even with Greengrass and Loach cameraman Barry Ackroyd on hand), but he knows when to keep it simple and let the actors rip. Vanessa Redgrave is staggering as Coriolanus’s she-wolf of a mother, Brian Cox effortlessly oleaginous as a scheming politico, and Fiennes is in spittingly intense form. A committed and worthwhile celluloid version of a play so few of us really know.

Author: Trevor Johnston

Time Out London Issue 2161: January 19-25, 2012

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User reviews of this film

DL said...

Posted on Mar 13 2012 03:41 EXCELLENT! The movie just came to San Diego this Friday and it was worth the wait. Shakespeare and I have never been great friends, probably due to the sad way it is taught in many high schools here in the US but I have always admired his work and plays. When his stories are told by great actors anyone can get through the language. The cast did an absolutely incredible job telling the story and bravo for casting Vanessa Redgrave as Volumnia, she was superb as always. I highly recommend this film.

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Lucy said...

Posted on Mar 12 2012 17:02 What can I say? This film was just simply one of the best I have seen in my entire life! So gripping, so well acted and fantastic! Why can't other Shakespeare films be as superb as this one? This film brought Shakespeare's work truly alive! I couldn't agree more with one of the reviewers above when he said he was shocked to see that this film hadn't even been mentioned at the bafta's. This film was truly above the rest. I hope the lack of recognition by those lacking in culture and true art forms does not affect the director, the cast or the producers from creating something similar in the future. It makes one cry to see that to win a bafta award or an oscar, a film must lack intellectual depth. I think a new set of awards should be created to reward truly intelligent film making and acting. I say leave the baftas and the oscars to the pretty dumb. It takes a dumb panel to judge the truly dumb as great.

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Peter Ludbrook said...

Posted on Feb 24 2012 11:08 I can only echo most of what has been said by others. An extraordinarily assured piece of cinema, well acted by a very good cast with a sympathetically abridged text. The subject matter does lend itself to a modern treatment and I found it a very gripping experience. Definitely 5 stars.

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david glowacki said...

Posted on Feb 14 2012 00:50 The normal wooden, cardboard cut out style, of acting that is Ralph Fiennes is nowhere to be seen here.Fiennes gives a powerful and consummate performance that grips you by the throat...The mixing of old and contemporary imagery actually works well...It is an easy story to follow and this is intelligent film making with a decent plot and good acting..Terrific 4 stars

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Phil Ince said...

Posted on Feb 08 2012 23:47 What on Earth has happened to film reviewing at Time Out London? They're not worth reading.
I look at Trevor Johnson's pitiful review of Coriolanus and have to assume he's not interested either in film or theatre. Describing Menenius / Brian Cox as "effortlessly oleaginous scheming politico" is an almost matchless piece of stupidity.
What is it? How can it be that something so completely falacious and vacuous has been printed? Does Trevor not know what the words he's using means? Did he not watch the film and inadvertently reveal in his review that he doesn't know anything about the play either? Was the beautifully clear script which was beautifully clearly delivered by the actors simply beyond him? Was his understanding of the language and observation of the performances really so intensely feeble that he honestly believed Brian Cox / Menenius was either "oleaginous" or "scheming"? Or did he not understand what he saw and heard and was too lazy or too timid to find and ask a grownup what it was all about?
In Trevor, Dave Calhoun has a very ample competitor for title of "Least Useful, Vigilent and Articulate Writer on Film in the World Today".
Just stop writing your grim stupidities and don't come back until you've educated yourselves sufficiently to presume to give an opinion in public.

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MM said...

Posted on Feb 07 2012 07:33 How in god's name did this not get a BAFTA nomination? Who in their right mind would judge My Week with Marilyn above this, or Clooney or Oldman as giving performanaces better than Fiennes'? As for Vanessa Redgrave - this is without a shadow of a doubt one of her greatest performances, and when she is not mugging she's the best in the business.

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godfrey hamilton said...

Posted on Feb 05 2012 07:00 Rather more engaging than Peter Hall's interpretation (he insisted on the pronunciation 'Cor-EYE-o-lanus') at the NT some years ago, in which Serena McKellen and Greg Hicks did sweaty topless battle in a sort of big sandpit on the Olivier stage, while those of us in the onstage seats (they were the only ones left) tried to look properly interested, well aware that 1100 pairs of eyes were scrutinising us more often than we would have liked. I'd left the play alone until this movie came along, and lawdy, Fiennes is smashing. Butler perhaps less so, tending to lose the language in the depths of his beard and Scots brogue, but butch and hunky enough to make up for it. Vanessa is superbly terrifying, a sort of negative anima in uniform, but what is most pleasing and memorable is to see the gusto with which Fiennes and Butler embrace (literally) the brutal homoerotic - if not indeed homosexual - desire pulsing beneath their final, fatal embrace. Lovely stuff.

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amazing said...

Posted on Feb 05 2012 00:18 This was wonderful. Everyone in it is brilliant (loved Brian Cox and Gerard Butler particularly - but Vanessa and James Nesbitt were amazing too), really hope Ralph Feinnes will direct more films (I think he wants to). I also think he's a fantastic stage actor - but problem with stage is you don't get big close-ups of his eyes!

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Phil Ince said...

Posted on Jan 26 2012 18:30 Brilliantly clear adaptation and performances. Many great, sour jokes and alot of compassion despite all the ferocity, A production like this serves and serves up the beautiful, scouring wit and heat. Coriolanus contrasts impressively with the watery crap advertised befcre it. It bursts with fearless, ruthless positing; emotions smash out with the force of stone and its frank, bitter gags drag out startled laughter. I felt it was a brilliant version of an astonishing play.

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Alexis said...

Posted on Jan 24 2012 16:59 I have just come back from seeing this and have just manged to close my mouth. I talked to myself in the car all the way home about it. I thought this was a staggering piece of work. Everybody's performances were superb and...I'm going to run out of superlatives here...but flippin' heck. It wasn't half good!

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Anitra Hussain said...

Posted on Jan 22 2012 09:21 Have to disagree that Ralph Fiennes can be inanimate on stage. His performances as Oedipus, Prospero & Coriolanus at the Gainsborough were some of the most memorable performances I have been lucky to watch. Oedipus made me cry & Coriolanus made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up because the character was so menacing & so single minded and so evil & Ralph Fiennes extracted that from the play and now translates it to the modern day so well. The Balkans , politics are the backdrop to an excellent unravelling and exposure of an evil man. Very clever really .

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Super excited to see more said...

Posted on Jan 21 2012 13:14 Super excited to see more of this kind of stuff onlnie.

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WPW said...

Posted on Jan 21 2012 12:59 Coriolanus is a difficult play; this is a first class movie. Ralph Fiennes directs and stars. His performance is outstanding. He is, I think, a better film actor than theatrical. On stage he can seem inanimate; on film, in close-up, we become aware of his eyes, which are the main tools of his talent. He is perfectly cast as Coriolanus. This is a tragic figure for whom honesty, both emotional and intellectual, is a weakness. He is not particularly sympathetically portrayed here, and yet the “lonely dragon” does garner our pity, as he surely must for the play to work, and this is due to Fiennes’s uncanny combination of fragility and brutality. This same quality I think gave weight to his part in Schindler’s List, in which, although he plays a monstrous character, he is not wholly monstrous, to the extent that we rather chillingly recognise him as human.
The supporting cast is equally good; even Vanessa Redgrave fails to irritate as Volumnia, and indeed the penultimate scene with Fiennes is riveting and bravely long (John Logan, screenwriter, producer and progenitor of the affair, has remained on the whole faithful to Shakespeare, and he and Fiennes have been unafraid to keep in what is central - but this is emphatically a movie, nonetheless). Brian Cox, as usual, is first rate and Gerard Butler looks very much the part as Coriolanus’s rival Aufidius, bravehearting his tattooed crew in his native Scottish accent. At any moment I expected him to declare “This is GLASGOW!”
Actually, the film is set in the recently-contemporary Balkans, and uses mock newsreel footage and Sky Newsflashes. The former works, the latter doesn’t, the sight of Channel 4 Newsreader Jon Snow speaking Shakespeare raising an unhelpful giggle rather than adding any verisimilitude. However, more than making up for this is the visual geography: a scarred, unfamiliar landscape. This is a world in which brute force thrives – in which, sometimes, it is morally necessary – and in which the sight of the warrior “sweating compassion” is therefore all the more telling.
Coriolanus is an undeservedly underperformed play. It is Shakespeare’s most overtly political, and provides perfect counterpoint to Julius Caesar (Caesar, unlike Coriolanus, having no principled scruples when it comes to loving the mob). Is Coriolanus a good man? Yes and no. Is Coriolanus a good film? Assuredly yes. Highly recommended.

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