Review: Coriolanus (15)

MANY modern movies featuring political power plays, bitter betrayals and family treachery fancy themselves as Shakespearean in nature, so when the real thing comes along it can be a bit disconcerting and even disorientating. That’s certainly the case with Coriolanus. Ralph Fiennes’ directorial debut modernises its source material, reimagining this tale of a banished Roman general as a contemporary urban war movie that makes full use of cinema’s capacity for visceral imagery to match the violent, pugnacious spirit of the language. The result is a gutsy (and gut-spilling) adaptation of one of the Bard’s less celebrated works that embraces the need to constantly play catch-up with the story to keep us off balance and on edge.

It’s certainly a trip, not least because Fiennes’s own performance is so thoroughly mesmerising. Casting himself in the title role, he’s a bruising, brutal presence. Prowling through smoke-filled battle zones, skinhead and face zebra-streaked with blood, he looks for all the world like a leaner, meaner Colonel Kurtz – a man as contemptuous of his battle scars as he is of the public in whose defence he acquired them. These lowly citizens, the inhabitants of “A place calling itself Rome”, but looking a lot like Serbia (it was shot in Belgrade), are the bane of his existence. They view him as a tyrannical fighting force, intent on suppressing their desire for freedom – until his strength, resolve and valour save their skins and their city from invasion from their Volscian enemy. Capitalising on such heroics, the politicians inevitably seek to elevate him to upper echelons of power for their own ends and Coriolanus, driven by his domineering and bloodthirsty mother Volumnia (Vanessa Redgrave), reluctantly plays along, despite his open disdain for “the people” whose favour he needs to court.

Fiennes fairly lets rip with Shakespeare’s language here, spitting out contemptuous, irony-couched insults at the huddled masses as Coriolanus is forced to go through the motions of a being a man-of-the-people. There’s a great scene in which his new, increasingly exasperated political spin doctor Mennius (Brian Cox) has to escort him through a busy market street; as Mennius attempts to instruct him on how to interact with ordinary people, the sense of discomfort and the barely contained hostility Fiennes evokes echoes brilliantly every false smile and baby-kissing electioneering campaign photo-op ever staged. Such things demonstrate how timeless the themes of Coriolanus are, so much so that the fickle, protesting citizenry of Rome could be seen as an intentional comment on the Occupy movement had Fiennes not shot the film more than 18 months ago.

The central appeal of the film, however, is seeing Fiennes unravel this titan whose pride doesn’t so much blind him to his true atavistic nature, but prevents him from adhering to it. It’s something he teases out through Coriolanus’s bitter rivalry with the battle-hungry Volscian leader Aufidius (Gerard Butler). With the Volscians a sort of military junta-in-waiting, Aufidius isn’t restrained by any false sense of duty and his freedom to fight for a cause in which he believes is a grudging source of envy and respect in Coriolanus.

Surprisingly, Butler acquits himself pretty well as he goes head-to-head with Fiennes. As an actor he’s never going to be accused of looking as if he’s overthinking anything, and yet his B-movie brawn makes him an appealing movie star, albeit one seemingly addicted to making terrible movies. Coriolanus, mercifully, isn’t a terrible movie, and Fiennes exploits Butler’s instinctive machismo to ensure Aufidius is a strong physical and psychological counterpoint to Coriolanus. In fact, so successfully does Fiennes ratchet up the two-sides-of-the-same coin hero/villain dynamic that exists between this pair that there comes a point late on when the film’s occasional fidelity to its dialogue-heavy theatrical origins almost feels as if it’s getting in the way of the first good Gerard Butler action movie in eons. That’s also partly testament to the way Fiennes handles the numerous combat scenes. Having had a small role in Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker, it’s clear that Fiennes was paying close attention to what Bigelow and cinematographer Barry Ackroyd were doing in that film (Fiennes subsequently hired Ackroyd to shoot Coriolanus). His film may not be quite as intense, but Coriolanus’s close-quarter fight sequences and the full-on scenes of urban warfare Fiennes stages have an admirable sense of purpose and coherence that could shame many a blockbuster.

It all adds up to a fairly meaty and entertaining film, one that is mercifully free from the dreaded “vanity project” whiff that can sometimes attend the directorial efforts of respected actors; unlike his antagonist, Fiennes is not contemptuous of the people he serves. On the contrary, he seems to respect both our intelligence as movie goers and our baser cinematic desires – at least enough to know that supplying us with a healthy dose of high culture bathed in blood is a good way of giving us the best of both worlds.

Coriolanus (15)

Directed by: Ralph Fiennes

Starring: Ralph Fiennes, Gerard Butler, Vanessa Redgrave, Brian Cox

Rating: ****