Coriolanus

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.

Hamlet

There are two kinds of people in this world: those who love Shakespeare, and those have not been properly introduced.

If you fall into the latter category, you may not enjoy the 2009 RSC Hamlet, starring David Tennant and Patrick Stewart.  As a TV film of a stage production, it’s well, stagey.  The 1990 Zeffirelli Hamlet, starring Mel Gibson and Glenn Close, is much more cinematic and, in my opinion, a better introduction to the play for non-aficionados  (I love Kenneth Branagh.  I really do.  But his 1996 film struck me as bloated and flat.).

If you’re a member of the former category, however, you’ll love this Hamlet.  The staginess won’t put you off, and you’ll home in on the quality of the direction and performances.  You’ll find that David Tennant, who found fame playing the eponymous Doctor for four seasons of the BBC’s hit show ‘Doctor Who,’ is an actor gifted with range as well as charisma.  He goes big with his Hamlet, and that “bigness” sets off the intimacy of the soliloquies.  Patrick Stewart, as Claudius, demonstrates how even the subtlest of gestures or tics can illuminate a character and generate sympathy in unexpected ways.  With the same motion, he can show us why Gertrude loves him and Hamlet hates him, and he can make us do a little of both.

This production’s biggest surprise, however, is Oliver Ford Davies as Polonius.  Davies, who earned the undying enmity of all people everywhere by appearing in not one, but all three, of the Star Wars prequels (Sio Bibble, governor of Naboo.  Hey, everyone has bills to pay.), steals every scene he’s in.  His Polonius is smart, funny, wily, and beginning to succumb to senility.  His dialogue drips off his tongue just so, and we in the audience light up every time he enters the frame.  In fact, I’d say his is a definitive Polonius: someone worth trusting, worth obeying, worth avenging.

So, there you have it.  Outstanding performances, reasonably well shot in an RSC-for-tv kind of way, and as good as any Hamlet you’re likely to see.  This Hamlet is a winner.

As You Like It

I was all set to fall in love with Kenneth Branagh’s direct-to-video AS YOU LIKE IT, set in a trading colony in Meiji Japan. I’ve been a fan of Branagh’s work since I saw HENRY V in college, and I’ve had a thing for Japanese culture since I read James Clavell’s _Shogun_ in the 7th grade. Thus, when I fired up this version of AS YOU LIKE IT while staying in a hotel outside of Yokohama (coincidentally, the site of the Meiji trading colony), it seemed like the perfect combination of material and viewer.

Alas, not even Brian Blessed, Alfred Molina, and Kevin Kline could save this slow, plodding, and unsatisfying film. The film’s Anglo-Japanese setting doesn’t really work, its pacing could have used some help in the editing room, and I had a sense of the film’s self awareness that this was, indeed, Shakespeareit was giving us. As written, AS YOU LIKE IT is great fun, but this production seems to miss the point.

I’m not sure what’s happening with Branagh. His star shined so brightly, but it has been guttering these last several years. Where’s the confident, exciting filmmaker of HENRY V, DEAD AGAIN, and MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING? I haven’t seen his remake of SLEUTH yet, but Time magazine’s impression does not look promising. What did he lose along the way?

Well, whatever he lost, he didn’t find it while making this latest AS YOU LIKE IT. Move along. There’s nothing to see here.

Romeo + Juliet

I fell in love with Luhrmann's ROMEO + JULIET when Brian Dennehy's said "Bring me my longsword" and Lady Montague reached for a Longsword .44 Cal.

This movie was everything I look for in a Shakespeare adaptation: audacious, creative, and fun, yet true to the heart of the play in question.

As a Netflix guy, I don't own a lot of movies. I own this one.

The Merchant of Venice

The toughest thing about staging 'The Merchant of Venice' is ending it on the right note. Our lovers have crushed the most compelling character in the piece, grinding him to dust until he's less then an afterthought. They then proceed to Portia's home, where they play cute romantic games, and the story wraps on a variation of "and they went off and had sex." It's as if Shakespeare set out to write a comedy, found himself in the middle of a tragedy, and felt compelled to wrestle the damn thing back onto comic territory, no matter what.

The Pacino 'Merchant of Venice' handles this ending better than any other production I've seen. It doesn't let the lovers (or Jessica, for that matter) off the hook. Rather, by juxtaposing their delight with Shylock's horror and Jessica's remorse, it convicts them of a heartlessness which we can only infer from the text.

The production values, as one would expect, are world-class, and the actors nail their roles. Fiennes and Irons are brilliant and, though the homoerotic implications of their relationship threaten to overwhelm the piece, said implications pay off wonderfully as we see Lynn Collins's Portia wondering just what she's gotten herself into. Then there's Pacino. Though we can never get past the fact that it's Pacino-as-Shylock, he brings profound sadness and humanity to his role. People love to hammer movie stars when they take on Shakespeare, but I think the man acquitted himself well. (Personally, I'd love to see his take on Richard III - I think he'd knock it out of the park!)

I had high hopes for 'The Merchant of Venice,' and I was not disappointed. It's well worth the rental.