Coriolanus

The overwhelming sense from this film is of good timing: it’s been a little while since the last fashionable Shakespeare adaptation, Ralph Fiennes is a bigger star than ever thanks to his visibility in the Potter franchise, and with the last year’s news dominated by riots and uprisings against dictators, the decision to modernise the story must have seemed incredibly fortunate and certainly comes over as remarkably relevant.

On the other hand, it ends up being the very modernisation that holds back this film from being a truly outstanding adaptation and renders it rather dull and, in all honesty, student-y.

Coriolanus is not one of Shakespeare’s very best, despite some excellent moments. The original legend of a good soldier who is a poor politician ending up first exiled for his belief that eagles should certainly be beyond the reach of crows, only to return as a threat and then to end up in the worst position of all because he didn’t have the courage of his conviction and relented only really has an hour or so’s good story, with the rest fleshed out (expertly) by the relationship between Coriolanus as his closest friends, his family and his rival Aufidius.

Fittingly for a Shakespeare adaptation, the setting seems to sit somewhere between contemporary Britain and Rome, with filming in Belgrade giving the scenes of bitter war a grim authenticity. The best and most memorable scenes of the film are confrontations between armies turned into cells of soldiers infiltrating enemy territory and having grim, brutal clashes.

The true strength of this version is its powerful performances, though. Fiennes starts a little falteringly, but is excellent at showing a powerful man becoming vulnerable. I’m not sure I can imagine a better Volumnia than Vanessa Redgrave, who superbly balances ruthlessness, softness and slightly alarming madness. Gerard Butler’s Aufidius deals very well with a difficult part (both a great authority and a bit of a weird fanboy when Coriolanus shows up), and for all its silliness 300 has given him an onscreen gravitas that will benefit him for the rest of his career. James Nesbitt’s politician is perfectly pitched between likeable and loathsome, too, and Brian Cox is deeply reliable in a mature, understated Shakespearean performance.

But as I said, it’s the modernisation that makes the production really falter. On one side, the scenes with Coriolanus coming into contact with the common people fall horribly flat, and the scene with him getting opinions from the marketplace only for them to be quickly turned jumps about loosely and doesn’t work. It was a mistake getting real-life newsreader Jon Snow, for it will badly date the piece and to be honest makes it look like a BBC drama, as he seems to pop up all the time in the likes of Doctor Who. Tamora and Cassius are oddly-cast, and I was never sure whether they were supposed to represent the common people, rabble-rousing outsiders or vaguely meant to make it seem like the setting was actually Rome despite not having Italian accents. Either way, both were too exaggerated for the parts.

But more than that, the problem was that modernisation saps the scale. It’s alright for Luhrman’s Romeo + Juliet, where there are extravagant parties and huge churches, but here all the pomp of the Roman senate becomes men in suits in a conference hall, armies clashing become five guys in a tank on a desolate road and historic confrontations become TV talk show appearances. I’d much rather see a lavish, high-budget version with legions and togas and gold everywhere, and the change is really one thought of by hundreds of Fringe students before now. Some less grainy cameras for the external shots would have been nice, too, for a 2011 film with big-name stars.

On a side note, this is the last time I will be going to a cinema to see something arty. Popcorn has simply ruined the experience for me. Some morons a row in front of us had big bags of popcorn and couldn’t eat with their mouths closed. In a largely quiet, intense film like this it was absolute torture and I wished I could be at home watching on my projector. Selfish, idiotic people. I don’t understand the association of popcorn with the cinema, I really don’t. I’d like to say it didn’t affect my impressions of the film, but it certainly ruined the experience. I’m paying for a monthly subscription to the cinema anyway, so it’s not like they get less money if I pirate (though one ‘ticket sale’ less will be recorded), and I just hate popcorn that much. From now on, only loud films with things blowing up or people screaming all the time for me. I never again want to be stuck for two hours with selfish idiots going CRUNCH CHOMP GLMMPH CLUMP GULP in a darkened room.