Corialanus (Film Review)
Jul. 29th, 2012 07:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakNo 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.
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.
