Thirty Days of Borgias: Day Eighteen

Day 18 ~ Give some advice to one of the characters.


Who, me? Now that would be boring. Clearly, if someone should be the Agony Aunt in The Borgias, there are two people already handing out sage (and snarky) advice - Vannozza and Machiavelli. Machiavelli is the writer of the two, so his Agony Column survives. Have a sneak peek:

Dear Niccolo,

I used to work freelance, but then decided to try steady employment to a single client. Now, jobwise, this proved to be an excellent decision; good salary, travelling opportunities, my employer values my services and keeps offering me opportunities to branch out. Here's the problem, though: I think I've fallen in love with him, and he a) first mooned over a woman who didn't want him and told him so repeatedly, b) had sex with that, that, that WOMAN whom he was supposed to be only interested in for a hostile takeover and who just DRAGGED him to her bed, and c) is somewhat fixated on his sister. Also until very recently he was technically supposed to be celibate. Andn I'm afraid if I ever drag him to my bed as well - curse that WOMAN! try to initiate something, it'll cost me my job. What's an assassin to do?

Yours,

Just-A-Country-Boy-Really


Dear Country Boy,

have you ever thought about making a pass to a philosopher, playwright and counciller to underappreciative city state rulers instead?



Dear Niccolo,

I'm worried about my brother and his constant job frustration, my second brother's increasing failure to resemble a sensible human being and my father's inability to admit either. The most annoying aspect about it is that I'm pretty sure the only one of us siblings who'd actually be good at being what my father is grooming my oldest brother for (which is the job said brother doesn't want), i.e. his successor, would be me. Dad temporarily put me in charge and I both enjoyed it and, if I say so myself, was far more efficient than several occupants of said job I've heard and read about. It's a position that requires management skills, the knowledge when to use diplomacy and when to bring down the sledgehammer, so to speak, and above all interest in spiritual matters, all of which I possess, and I happen to know I'd look great in both red and white as well. Frustratingly, the organization in question won't permit my taking said job permanently because of my gender, otherwise I think I'd be able to persuade Dad. What's a woman to do?

Yours

Dazzling-In-Hairnets

Dear Dazzling-in-Hairnets,

if you ever come across a gentleman calling himself "The Doctor", persuade him to take you as a companion. I have it on authority he is in possession of a time travelling device. Then use him to get to the Third Age of Mankind, where, going by time traveller gossip, the organization in question is headed by a woman, and ditch him. If you want to show gratitude for this Machiavellian advice, please ensure a revival of my plays which somehow never caught on as much as my non-fiction did!


Dear Niccolo,

I didn't get to be one of the most powerful people in my organization and a strong contender for the top position by stupidity, lack of imagination or lack of scruples. Yet every one of my attempts to remove the upstart who had the gall to outbid me for the job have failed. What am I doing wrong? I'm out of legal deposition options to try, invasions to provoke, and something tells me all my hard work at successful poisoning won't get me anywhere, either. What's an antagonist to do?

Yours,

Not Pope Yet


Dear Not Pope Yet,

good things come to those who wait. Have you considered art patronage as a way to pass the time until the top position becomes free again? I can reccommend several young Florentine artists who are interested and also, due to Recent Events involving a certain monk, out of material to paint and sculpt with. Additionally, you could write your memoirs. Entertaining tell alls are one of the best ways to channel frustration at the success of people we loathe ever since Procopius had a go at Justinian and Theodora. You could ruin your opponent's reputation not just in the present but for all time, and do so with a lesser death score among the general population than your previous attempts to boot.




( The rest of the days )

Corialanus (Film Review)

No Hollow Crown anymore, and thus I get my Shakespeare kicks from Ralf Fiennes' film version of Corialanus, which I hadn't seen before. He directs as well as stars in the title role, and the supporting cast is fantasic - Vanessa Redgrave as his mother Volumnia, Brian Cox as the wily and affable politician Menenius, James Nesbitt as a demagogic tribune, Jessica Chastain as Coriolanus' wife Virgilia and Gerald Butler, being not bad, not bad at all (and who'd thought it after his Phantom) as the arch nemisis Tullus Aufidius. The film, like the Ian McKellen/Richard Loncraine Richard III and the Baz Luhrmann Romeo and Juliet, adapts the play for the present, ruthlessly slashes, edits and changes pace. It was shot in Serbia, around Belgrad, so the fictional Rome is basically a Balkan country of today.

Now Corialanus, the play, is a tough nut to crack. It's the anti-identification play out of which no one, with the possible exception of Menenius, comes out looking well. Gaius Martius (he gets the honorofic "Coriolanus" mid play) is a soldier barely able to function in civilian life, with nothing but contempt for the people and both unable and unwilling to play the political game of disguising it and to shmooze, which is how he gets himself banished. The people in turn are presented as easily stirred up this way or that way (not news if you know Shakespeare's Julius Caesar), the tribunes are egotastic demagogues, Menenius means well, but has the really dumb idea of getting Gaius Martius into politics to begin with, and Volumnia, who in her fierceness is one of the best Shakespeare roles for women, is very much where Gaius Martius Coriolanus got his contempt for the people and stiff necked pride from. Tullus Aufidius, his best enemy, both admires and resents him but in the end is willing to scheme where Corialanus is not. It's like a Robert Altman movie. Only faster paced in this version. Fiennes as a director has a real visual flair, and he is great at coaxing excellent performances out of his fellow actors. Having seen Brian Cox mainly in villain roles before, it was great to see him as wily yet virtuous for a change. Vanessa Redgrave is stunning as Volumnia, who is basically Angela Petrelli without a sense of humour but with the same sharp tongue, iron-clad ambiton, willingness to sacrifice her child/children if needs be yet loving them all the same. Since this version is contemporary, Volumnia is transformed into an old soldier and career military herself (at official functions, she's still in uniform), and we get the kind of scenes with her and Gaius Martius mostly reserved for father and sons on American tv and filmdom.

As for Ralf Fiennes' own performance, if actors like Tom Hiddleston and Sebastian Stan are the masters of the teary eyed rebellious stare, Fiennes is the master of the demonic stare; it's fiercely physical performance, with Gaius Martius in battle transforming himself into something mythic and barely human, yet clumsy and ill at ease as soon as you put him in an every day context, though no less glaring. In his big scene with Volumnia, when his big revenge scheme clashes with his mother's demand, the moment when he realises he can't continue the war and will give in to her (and that this simultanously condemns him to death) is an amazing shattering and melting of all that self forged rage embodiment into something nakedly human (and when he then cries, it's devastating because of how he was before).

As a director, Fiennes is amazingly blatant with the homoerotic dimension of war. Not just in terms of, say, canon as phallic symbols and the soldiers, with their shaved heads, transforming themselves into those as well but via the entire relationship between Coriolanus and Aufidius. The two are obsessed with each other, the first time they meet mid-battle (not the first time they meet at all, we're informed this is just the culmination of a long feud, just the first ime in the film), their hand-to-hand combat isn't just violent but also soon indistiguishable from sex, and this is echoed at the end when Aufidius finally (after some of his soldiers already had a go at his command, just as they earlier emulated and forged themselves into the image of Coriolanus) does kill Corialanus, in a tight embrance and via a knife, tenderly cradling his head during and after. The desire to kill and desire are hopelessly entertwined and yet another symptom of how and why Coriolanus as well as Aufidius and his soldiers are unable to fit into civilian life anymore. Early in the play Gaius Martius calls himself a sword made for Rome to use, and that is all he can be (either for or against Rome). Which is his tragedy.