There is no more mercy in him than there is milk in a male tiger.

Coriolanus

(2011)

I’ll readily admit that I don’t know my Coriolanus from my elbow but I suspect I have a glimmer of why it is one of Shakespeare’s less-staged tragedies.

As proficiently mounted as Ralph Fiennes adaptation is, the problem could be down to the title character himself. On some level we need to be able to empathise with Coriolanus (played by Fiennes) in order to be involved with the fate he drives himself towards but, unlike certain of the Bard’s better-known tragic heroes, we are allowed little insight into his psyche. He’s a born and bred warmonger, with no sympathy for the masses (they only deserve grain if they’ve fought for their country) and a level of bravery that borders on sheer bloodthirstiness. His disinterest in courting public approval might be seen as a better side to his nature (an unwillingness to prostitute his beliefs to curry favour) but it could just reflect a prideful temperament; he considers himself better than those he would not condescend towards.

Without soliloquies to expose a more complicated nature, we feel little for him even when those around him conspire to bring about his downfall. Led by a militaristic nature, he is content to remove civil liberties and, provoked to ire, condemn popular rule. It seems the play has been a popular choice during periods of political strife, and certainly one can see the undercurrent of opposing positions (freedom versus restriction) that informs it. The Plebeians propose a more democratic Republic, Coriolanus (a ruling Patrician) a more prescribed one, and Menenius (also a Patrician) sits somewhere in the middle (the status quo).

For the most part, Fiennes decision to furnish his adaptation with a contemporary setting is a successful one. I tend to be slightly dubious of such gimmickry, but ultimately what counts is whether it enhances the telling. As a director, Fiennes’ choices are muscular and cogent. His choice to rely on handheld camera is easy to appreciate, as it lends immediacy and energy to the proceedings.

The problem comes with the self-consciousness of the trappings; the choice of restaging dialogue and commentary as TV coverage (complete with Jon Snow) feels like an over-familiar crutch. Fiennes makes it coherent, but it is the most obvious of possible choices. And that’s my general take-away; he works hard to make his film gritty and powerful and he largely succeeds, but his decisions are never truly inspired ones. I would like to see him take on other directing projects, however. There’s a confidence here that deserves to be unleashed on l formal material, where he feels less responsibility to the text.

I’m uncertain if Fiennes directorial choices are to blame, John Logan’s adaptation, or the Shakey himself, but certain crucial moments lack sufficient weight to convey the choices that characters reach. In particular, I had problems buying into Tullus Aufidius’ (Gerard Butler) embrace of his arch blood enemy Coriolanus out of sympathy with his plight. As Fiennes shoots it, Aufidius makes the choice virtually on a whim; maybe this is a point where the modern setting works against timeworn honour codes. Additionally, I was unconvinced by the decisive plea-bargaining of Coriolanus’ mother. Even given the Oedipal undercurrents between the two of them, building to Coriolanus’ change of mind through long, stony silences only underlines the impenetrability of the character.

Fiennes has filled out his cast with some interesting players. Butler makes a believably rough and ready Aufidius, while Vanessa Redgrave, as ever, is peerless as Coriolanus’ mother, Volumnia. Jessica Chastain doesn’t make an enormous impression as his wife Virgilia, but the main plaudits go to Cox as smooth peacemaker Menenius and James Nesbitt as slippery provocateur Tribune Brutus. Fiennes is a rock-solid centre but, as noted, it is not the most accessible of roles.

Updating the setting of Shakespeare’s plays may work to the advantage of the text, bringing out timeless relevance in the material, or become a distraction, with the danger that the trappings run the engine (of course, you could say the same of revelling in period costumes). Fiennes certainly avoids the latter, but I don’t think he is always able to make the workings of the Roman state sufficiently clear; one might argue that is an acceptable sacrifice as long as one gets the gist, which one does.

In addition, for a play of explicitly political discourse, he seems curiously uninterested in attaching specific meaning to its retelling. The location filming in Serbia may invoke superficial commentary on events there. Yet Fiennes’ only statement appears to be how best to “perform” the play, rather than to overlay /recent current world events over its content. Some reviewers have cited the Arab Spring but this suggests casting about for the kind of markers that have informed past revivals, rather than reflecting the director’s intent.

***1/2

Comments

He’s so persistent! He always gets his man.

Speed (1994) (SPOILERS) It must have been a couple of decades since I last viewed Speed all the way through, so it’s pleasing to confirm that it holds up. Sure, Jan de Bont’s debut as a director can’t compete with the work of John McTiernan, for whom he acted as cinematographer and who recommended de Bont when he passed on the picture, but he nevertheless does a more than competent work. Which makes his later turkeys all the more tragic. And Keanu and Sandra Bullock display the kind of effortless chemistry you can’t put a price tag on. And then there’s Dennis Hopper, having a great old sober-but-still-looning time.

How would Horatio Alger have handled this situation?

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998) (SPOILERS) Gilliam’s last great movie – The Zero Theorem (2013) is definitely underrated, but I don’t think it’s that underrated – Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas could easily have been too much. At times it is, but in such instances, intentionally so. The combination of a visual stylist and Hunter S Thompson’s embellished, propulsive turn of phrase turns out, for the most part, to be a cosmically aligned affair, embracing the anarchic abandon of Raoul Duke and Doctor Gonzo’s Las Vegas debauch while contriving to pull back at crucial junctures in order to engender a perspective on all this hedonism. Would Alex Cox, who exited stage left, making way for the Python, have produced something interesting? I suspect, ironically, he would have diluted Thompson in favour of whatever commentary preoccupied him at the time (indeed, Johnny Depp said as much: “ Cox had this great material to work with and he took it and he added his own stuff to it ”). Plus

But everything is wonderful. We are in Paris.

Cold War (2018) (SPOILERS) Pawel Pawlikowski’s elliptical tale – you can’t discuss Cold War without saying “elliptical” at least once – of frustrated love charts a course that almost seems to be a caricature of a certain brand of self-congratulatorily tragic European cinema. It was, it seems “ loosely inspired ” by his parents (I suspect I see where the looseness comes in), but there’s a sense of calculation to the progression of this love story against an inescapable political backdrop that rather diminishes it.

You were a few blocks away? What’d you see it with, a telescope?

The Eyes of Laura Mars (1978) (SPOILERS) John Carpenter’s first serial-killer screenplay to get made, The Eyes of Laura Mars came out nearly three months before Halloween. You know, the movie that made the director’s name. And then some. He wasn’t best pleased with the results of The Eyes of Laura Mars, which ended up co-credited to David Zelag Goodman ( Straw Dogs , Logan’s Run ) as part of an attempt by producer Jon Peters to manufacture a star vehicle for then-belle Barbra Streisand: “ The original script was very good, I thought. But it got shat upon ”. Which isn’t sour grapes on Carpenter’s part. The finished movie bears ready evidence of such tampering, not least in the reveal of the killer (different in Carpenter’s conception). Its best features are the so-uncleanly-you-can-taste-it 70s New York milieu and the guest cast, but even as an early example of the sub-genre, it’s burdened by all the failings inherit with this kind of fare.

No matter how innocent you are, or how hard you try, they’ll find you guilty.

The Wrong Man (1956) (SPOILERS) I hate to say it, but old Truffaut called it right on this one. More often than not showing obeisance to the might of Hitchcock during his career-spanning interview, the French critic turned director was surprisingly blunt when it came to The Wrong Man . He told Hitch “ your style, which has found its perfection in the fiction area, happens to be in total conflict with the aesthetics of the documentary and that contradiction is apparent throughout the picture ”. There’s also another, connected issue with this, one Hitch acknowledged: too much fidelity to the true story upon which the film is based.

To survive a war, you gotta become war.

Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985) (SPOILERS?) I’d like to say it’s mystifying that a film so bereft of merit as Rambo: First Blood Part II could have finished up the second biggest hit of 1985. It wouldn’t be as bad if it was, at minimum, a solid action movie, rather than an interminable bore. But the movie struck a chord somewhere, somehow. As much as the most successful picture of that year, Back to the Future , could be seen to suggest moviegoers do actually have really good taste, Rambo rather sends a message about how extensively regressive themes were embedding themselves in Reaganite, conservative ‘80s cinema (to be fair, this is something one can also read into Back to the Future ), be those ones of ill-conceived nostalgia or simple-minded jingoism, notional superiority and might. The difference between Stallone and Arnie movies starts right here; self-awareness. Audiences may have watched R ambo in the same way they would a Schwarzenegger picture, but I’m

I don't like the way Teddy Roosevelt is looking at me.

North by Northwest (1959) (SPOILERS) North by Northwest gets a lot of attention as a progenitor of the Bond formula, but that’s giving it far too little credit. Really, it’s the first modern blockbuster, paving the way for hundreds of slipshod, loosely plotted action movies built around set pieces rather than expertly devised narratives. That it delivers, and delivers so effortlessly, is a testament to Hitchcock, to writer Ernest Lehmann, and to a cast who make the entire implausible exercise such a delight.

The game is rigged, and it does not reward people who play by the rules.

Hustlers (2019) (SPOILERS) Sold as a female Goodfellas – to the extent that the producers had Scorsese in mind – this strippers-and-crime tale is actually a big, glossy puff piece, closer to Todd Phillips as fashioned by Lorene Scarfia. There are some attractive performances in Hustlers, notably from Constance Wu, but for all its “progressive” women work male objectification to their advantage posturing, it’s incredibly traditional and conservative deep down.

What do they do, sing madrigals?

The Singing Detective (2003) Icon’s remake of the 1986 BBC serial, from a screenplay by Dennis Potter himself. The Singing Detective fares less well than Icon’s later adaptation of Edge of Darkness , even though it’s probably more faithful to Potter’s original. Perhaps the fault lies in the compression of six episodes into a feature running a quarter of that time, but the noir fantasy and childhood flashbacks fail to engage, and if the hospital reality scans better, it too suffers eventually.

You don’t know anything about this man, and he knows everything about you.

The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956) (SPOILERS) Hitchcock’s two-decades-later remake of his British original. It’s undoubtedly the better-known version, but as I noted in my review of the 1934 film, it is very far from the “ far superior ” production Truffaut tried to sell the director on during their interviews. Hitchcock would only be drawn – in typically quotable style – that “ the first version is the work of a talented amateur and the second was made by a professional ”. For which, read a young, creatively fired director versus one clinically going through the motions, occasionally inspired by a shot or sequence but mostly lacking the will or drive that made the first The Man Who Knew Too Much such a pleasure from beginning to end.

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

Search This Blog