Coriolanus (2011)
Feb. 29th, 2012 10:40Coriolanus. Dir. Ralph Fiennes, 2011.
This is such a good movie. Such a good movie. I went to see it with![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
kuwdora and we both had no knowledge or expectations beyond "Shakespeare play that's rarely turned into a movie!" and we were both more or less blown away.
So yes, Ralph Fiennes directs this full modern-dress adaptation of an early Shakespeare effort, and it's amazing. Unlike Julie Taymor's Titus, which is another excellent adaptation of less than Grade A Shakespeare (and another adaptation featuring a nearly-silent boy character who becomes important at the end), this movie is entirely consistent in both its setting and its design, and it's flat-out great the way that obviously BBC-esque newscasters can deliver updates on the TV in full Shakespearean verse and it works. The movie is great, in fact, at integrating the play with modern communications technology, such that one of the heralds delivers his updates to Coriolanus via Skype. YES. Also, at one point the graffitti in Corioles, the urban battlefield from which the titular Caius Martius derives his name, actually was the bad Latin (illegitimi non carborundi sunt) for "Don't let the bastards get you down." A+ set and costume design, in other words!
The plot of the movie concerns the aforementioned Roman general Caius Martius and the political problem of his overweening pride--he's been taught by his mother Volumnia to spurn the plebeians and love the battlefield, so after his success on the latter brings him to the position of consul, which requires flattering the former, he's got real problems, and so does Rome, since Martius' old best-loved enemy Tullus Aufidius leads the Volsces, Rome's powerful enemy, and as the tagline goes, "Nature teaches beasts to know their friends." (Yes, this is vague, but I honestly think the play is better appreciated not knowing the twist at the end of the third act.)
The performances from the cast are uniformly stellar, though I had the weird experience of constantly thinking the actors were someone else: Is that Clive Owen playing Aufidius? No, it's Gerard Butler. Is that Maggie Smith playing Volumnia? No, it's Vanessa Redgrave. Is that Lord Voldemort playing Coriolanus? Yes, yes it is.
I'm still not sure what to make of the play. I think its obviously eastern European setting, in this movie, grounds and sobers it; I don't know what moral to find, necessarily, in the text as it stands, though of course it doesn't have to have a moral. In the meantime, it's a powerful, strange, unsettling story, rich and complicated around gender and power and politics.kuwdora and I were surely the only people laughing in the theater at the "I hate him so much, I love him!" shaving scene, though, but we couldn't help it, because the subtext is so clearly text, and you'll see why if you see the movie.
This is such a good movie. Such a good movie. I went to see it with
kuwdora and we both had no knowledge or expectations beyond "Shakespeare play that's rarely turned into a movie!" and we were both more or less blown away. So yes, Ralph Fiennes directs this full modern-dress adaptation of an early Shakespeare effort, and it's amazing. Unlike Julie Taymor's Titus, which is another excellent adaptation of less than Grade A Shakespeare (and another adaptation featuring a nearly-silent boy character who becomes important at the end), this movie is entirely consistent in both its setting and its design, and it's flat-out great the way that obviously BBC-esque newscasters can deliver updates on the TV in full Shakespearean verse and it works. The movie is great, in fact, at integrating the play with modern communications technology, such that one of the heralds delivers his updates to Coriolanus via Skype. YES. Also, at one point the graffitti in Corioles, the urban battlefield from which the titular Caius Martius derives his name, actually was the bad Latin (illegitimi non carborundi sunt) for "Don't let the bastards get you down." A+ set and costume design, in other words!
The plot of the movie concerns the aforementioned Roman general Caius Martius and the political problem of his overweening pride--he's been taught by his mother Volumnia to spurn the plebeians and love the battlefield, so after his success on the latter brings him to the position of consul, which requires flattering the former, he's got real problems, and so does Rome, since Martius' old best-loved enemy Tullus Aufidius leads the Volsces, Rome's powerful enemy, and as the tagline goes, "Nature teaches beasts to know their friends." (Yes, this is vague, but I honestly think the play is better appreciated not knowing the twist at the end of the third act.)
The performances from the cast are uniformly stellar, though I had the weird experience of constantly thinking the actors were someone else: Is that Clive Owen playing Aufidius? No, it's Gerard Butler. Is that Maggie Smith playing Volumnia? No, it's Vanessa Redgrave. Is that Lord Voldemort playing Coriolanus? Yes, yes it is.
I'm still not sure what to make of the play. I think its obviously eastern European setting, in this movie, grounds and sobers it; I don't know what moral to find, necessarily, in the text as it stands, though of course it doesn't have to have a moral. In the meantime, it's a powerful, strange, unsettling story, rich and complicated around gender and power and politics.
kuwdora and I were surely the only people laughing in the theater at the "I hate him so much, I love him!" shaving scene, though, but we couldn't help it, because the subtext is so clearly text, and you'll see why if you see the movie.