You don't see
Coriolanus at many Shakespeare repertory theaters. It's a tough play about a hard man, the fickle masses, and one woman's insatiable drive for glory in a culture that will allow her to achieve it only through the men she controls.
Caius Martius is a patrician and a General of the Roman Republic. At home in the (relative) meritocracy of the Roman Army and a formidable battler, he wins a great victory over the hated Volscians at the Battle of Coriolae. Lauded in Rome and awarded the honorific "Coriolanus," his family sees this as his moment to stand for Consul. But he can't do the things that politicians do. He can't pretend to be one of the people, whom he sees as a fickle, unwashed mass - there to be led or bullied. He has so completely absorbed the martial virtues that he can't stand to trumpet his victories or show his battle scars for the approval of the citizenry. In short, he's unfit to be Consul. When the entrenched politicians who see him as a threat perceive this, they mercilessly destroy his political career. The rest, well, it's tragedy for some and triumph for others. But it isn't nice and it isn't funny and it isn't pretty - not the stuff to pull in the fickle, unwashed masses who only turn up for yet another production of
A Midsummer Night's Dream.
So bravo to Ralph Fiennes for tackling one of the more challenging plays in this, his directorial debut. Taking a page from the theatrical tradition of transposing Shakespeare's plays to any number of historical and cultural settings, he sets his
Coriolanus in the Balkans of not so very long ago. He casts
300's Gerard Butler as the Volscian leader, the omnipresent (and best-ever Hannibal Lecter)
Brian Cox as Senator and family friend Menenius, James Nesbitt (delightful in the BBC's
Jekyll and a standout in the first
Hobbit movie) as an enemy politician, and the ubiquitous Jessica Chastain (who took my breath away in
Tree of Life) as his wife. Most critically and successfully of all, he landed Vanessa Redgrave to play Volumnia, his mother and a woman so hungry for glory that she'll chew through every man in her family to get it and call it love.
Redgrave is
Coriolanus's secret weapon, delivering the definitive performance of the role in modern film. In a cast filled with actors varying from promising to respectable to noted to outstanding, Redgrave is great. By "great," I mean Great. Her Volumnia is a masterpiece of ambition and calculation, Roman virtue and matronly control. And, yes, even of love. Fiennes, to his credit, lets her run. He demonstrates the self-confidence to embrace a performance that outshines his own very good one and, in the process, creates something magical.
Is
Coriolanus perfect? Nothing is. The film's battles and knife fights are incomprehensible and could have benefitted from the touch of an editor with more experience in the action genre (An IMdB search tells me that editor Nicolas Gaster did the outstanding
Moon and the indulgent
MirrorMask, among many other credits stretching back to 1977, but he appears to have no major action credits to his name.). But that's about the only glove I can lay on it. When that's all I've got, you're doing ok.
I've always respected Ralph Fiennes as an actor. With
Coriolanus, he debuts as a director and interpreter of Shakespeare worthy of note. I look forward to his next effort.
Microcosmos delivers a mesmerizing documentary about icky bugs. Showing life on their scale with no narration and a wonderful score, the film just us the majesty of an animal kingdom right beneath our feet. At least, it tries to. While I admired the effort, I just couldn't get past the fact that bugs are icky.
