TIFF Movie Review: Coriolanus (2011)
If you're going to adapt Shakespeare... then ADAPT IT!
Photo: The Weinstein Co.
Just because William Shakespeare wrote a play it doesn't mean it should be adapted into a film. And just because you've decided to adapt a Shakespeare play into a film doesn't mean you should feature your actors standing around reading Shakespeare's lines word by word. Yet, that's exactly what Ralph Fiennes has done with Coriolanus, a film "adaptation" of a lesser known Shakespeare play with some of the best line-reading you will see all year, but wow is it a confused bore.
The cast includes Ralph Fiennes, Gerard Butler, Brian Cox, Vanessa Redgrave, James Nesbitt, John Kani, Jessica Chastain and Ashraf Barhom. For more information on this film including pictures, trailers and a detailed synopsis choose from the following menu.
Review
"Coriolanus" is a The Weinstein Co. release, directed by Ralph Fiennes and is rated R for some bloody violence. The running time is 2 hours 2 minutes.
Fiennes stars as the legendary Roman general Caius Martius 'Coriolanus', a fearsome soldier who fights more for pride and the love of battle than for the Roman people he must hope to impress in order to gain the coveted seat of Consul. Pushed by his ambitious mother Volumnia (Vanessa Redgrave) and highly decorated for his efforts in battle, the government is ready to appoint him, but the people, led by two dissenting senators, refuse to embrace such a decision and banish him from Rome.
Exiled, Coriolanus leaves his mother, wife (Jessica Chastain) and son and seeks a meeting with his long-standing enemy and leader of the Volsces army, Tullus Aufidius (Gerard Butler), with whom he aims to fight side-by-side and take revenge on the city that turned its back on him.
There is absolutely no reason to try to sell this as a modern story, nothing about it is modern as any meaningful parallels to today are non-existent. As far as the presentation is concerned, Fiennes shows he has two modes as a director; he can either present a talking head reading Shakespeare with accomplished intensity or scenes of war accompanied by Ilan Eshkeri's bombastic score rendering each battle break the same as the last as bullets are fired, bombs explode and the scene is broken up between the battlefield and cuts to Fidelis TV coverage.
It's quite obvious when the film is going to take a break for an action scene as Eshkeri pounds the drums and the scan lines of a TV presentation appear on the screen. Buh, buh, bum, dum, dum BOOM! And as impressive as Fiennes' cast can read Shakespeare the stoppage in the film's momentum as they read their lengthy passages is unbearable.
Plenty of praise has been doted on Vanessa Redgrave as Coriolanus' mother Volumnia and any performance praise in this film is largely due to who gets the best lines to read because everyone involved is a talented actor. Redgrave's character, however, is just one of the story's many conundrums as she'll be seen at one moment chastising the men that exiled her son and in another, chastising her son. It got to such a point I began tuning out almost as soon as she started.
And as far as line-reading goes, Fiennes deserves just as much praise himself, particularly for his final speech, which is read with a menacing inflection, but that's all it is, lines. Everyone gets their moment to banter the Bard, but to expect the audience will actually care for these wordy passages in their entirety is a gross overestimation.
Fiennes didn't bite off more than he could chew with his decision to make Coriolanus his directorial debut, he is simply chewing on too little. There isn't enough here, at least not enough to make a solid film, but that's exactly the issue. If you're going to adapt a Shakespearean play into a modern age story, then adapt it! Don't just take the play, use the same words and scenes, put on updated clothes and stand around in updated architecture. That's just confusing the point and as proven here, results in a film destined for death by boredom.
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Wow
Wow, Brad. When you don't get it, you really don't get it. But I love most of your reviews, so maybe I'm missing something here. Are you saying that the film would've been better had they changed the lines from the original play? Did you mean there's no point in putting a play onscreen?
Exactly. So if Shakespeare's plays are adapted into operas, he will attack the actors who sing exceptional well? He is actually saying: if i hear one more line of Shakespeare, it will throw me into a rage.
And ben, I didn't attack any actors. In fact, I praised the actors. That is, I praised them for the ability to read Shakespeare effectively.
It has nothing to do with putting a play on screen, it's about actually adapting something. This isn't an adaptation though it claims to be. Adapting means to adapt, but instead they turned it into a confused mess using the same play in a conflicting setting.
They should have either adapted it for a modern story, or left it in its original setting. Last I checked we weren't living in 17th century Rome.
When you say I didn't get it, did you take something else out of it? You've obviously seen it.
So I'm guessing you didn't like Romeo & Juliet then, Brad? (Referring to the one with Leo Di Caprio if that wasn't clear).
No I did not.
Well, what I took out of it was that I thought it was a great film version of a little-known Shakespeare play. I loved the performances, thought it was well-filmed, and that Ralph Fiennes is surprisingly good at directing.
But I think where I disagree with you is the idea of adaptation. I don't think this was meant to be a re-imagining of Coriolanus. It was meant to be Coriolanus by Shakespeare, with the only difference being the setting. Same dialogue, same themes, same plot. The only thing that Fiennes wanted to be different about it was the visual aspect. Shakespeare is timeless. It can be portrayed in any setting. Doesn't mean it can be portrayed WELL necessarily, but it can be tried.
"It was meant to be Coriolanus by Shakespeare, with the only difference being the setting."
And that is what I am saying is a problem, because Shakespeare's language, for me, does not work in that setting.
Here's the thing, Brad. Imagine a situation where a critic hypothetically don't like comedy movies because he thinks filmmaking is serious and doesn't understand why someone will want to try and make it funny. Would he review comedies?
Maybe he's the best at reviewing dramatic films, but every single review of a Comedy film would be a negative bashing. That's because if a critic just doesn't like the "type of movie" as a whole, then he shouldn't even try.
That's what you're doing here. You HATE the type of movie (Original Shakespeare with a modern setting). You've already expressed your negativity on Romeo + Juliet and now you're doing it with this film. If they tried Hamlet next, and then Macbeth, you'll be burning every single one of these movies to the ground.
So please stop trying to review movies you are conscious you are going to hate, because not only are you not going to even try, but you're never going to "get it" either.
Brad, I have to agree with you 110%. I so wanted to enjoy this when I settled into the Elgin last night but ultimately, it was a disappointing, confused mess. You are correct – you will not hear Shakespearean verse better interpreted by a better band of actors – but great line readings alone do not make for a great movie. The shakey-cam approach grew very tiresome and redundant. I love Shakespeare – I should be this film's ideal audience member – but Coriolanus should have been left alone in its relative obscurity as a stage property. A good many people left throughout the screening and I imagine that if most of the cast and creatives weren't present, a good many more would have followed suit. I admire their efforts but I just couldn't bring myself to give a damn about any of it.
Out of curiosity, what are your thoughts on the 1996 version of "Romeo and Juliet"? It's modernized but has the actors reading from the original play.
As for this film, I didn't really have an interest in seeing it to begin with. I like Shakespeare a lot, but for some reason this didn't grab me.
I did not like it, but I would have to revisit it to give you a further explanation. The two are dramatically different in style and approach to their respective material. Plus, Romeo and Juliet is easier to adapt into modern times than something like Coriolanus.
Ah I see. I really love that film, and think it's a really interesting and visually stunning way to tell the story.
I didn't have much interest in this and I have none whatsoever now. Obviously some are of the opinion that anything written by Shakespeare is unequivocally the greatest thing ever written down in the history of the human race, and to alter it in any way is absolute blasphemy. And that's absolutely ridiculous. This is a movie, not a play. And the whole changing the setting thing (while still keeping the Elizabethan dialogue) just seems laughably preposterous to me. I'm curious as to how this will do awards-wise though, because obviously people idolize anything Shakespeare.
Brad, I'm surprised you say 'any meaningful parallels to today are non-existent'. Fiennes didn't set it in the Balkans for nothing. Rival warlords switching sides – it happens not just in the Balkans but in Afghanistan, Pakistan, parts of Africa…just not in Seattle, maybe.
First review from the site I have ever read that is totally off-base and lacks logic. So from what I understand is when actors say lines from an original script they're acting, but when they do so from Shakespeare they're not. Also, if you make a movie based off a play you must totally change it, if not its sucks and you didn't try. Well last time I checked when Mel Gibson did Hamlet and the lines were in prose it didn't sound right and was terrible, oh and also the setting was accurate but that's right, it didn't help either since the movie was still terrible.
I was over the whole Modern-Day-Shakespeare craze more than a decade ago. I would like to see a STRAIGHT adaptation for once. There hasn't been one filmed version that hasn't been given a revisionist uptake in god knows how many years (the final straw was changing Prospero to a woman in 'The Tempest', which deservedly flopped).
McKellan's RICHARD III was an exception, and that's only because he shaped it from his theatrical production first.
See, I think to approach Shakespeare drama as if it is something so ancient it can't be modern flies over the head of some people. Shakespeare was writing stories that today we attribute to him, but they are at the very root issues and drama that exists today. The relationships ring true in all modern drama.
Now, looking at this trailer and reading up…it's clearly a fantasy setting. Much like Kings, the TV series was a fantasy set in modern times, where there were still Kingdoms and rulers such as the times of old.
I say an open mind is needed. Shakespeare is kind of timeless.
"nothing about it is modern as any meaningful parallels to today are non-existent."
Don't they have any newspapers in Toronto?
Precisely.
In addition to many current global events, one can easily draw extraordinary parallels with the extreme, homo-erotic Maennerstaat of the Third Reich (and most societies espousing such all-encompassing Spartan philosophy); the Knight of the Long Knives; a figure who believes himself alone worthy of leadership due to his survival in War (Hitler and his various 'saved by Fate' episodes in both WWI and the Party years); the powerful significance of the bitter, historic Croatian/Serbian enmity (I half expect to see a visual nod of the head to the Ustasha's Jasenovac); the powerful mother-son bond (Hitler was extremely devoted to his mother but dismissive of most other women, who rarely can hold a prime place with the Alphas in a warrior/wolf pack society). Even the preference for fighting hand-to-hand with cold steel (besides being intimately erotic) can be linked to Jasenovac – where knives were the weapon of choice and manual throat-slitting a popular 'sport'. For those in love with the spiritual and physical 'highs' of warfare, there is no greater euphoria than that gained in hand-to-hand combat. There is a valid reason why this play was banned in the 1930s throughout France. Pop culture, fashion, technology, and language may change… but human essence and its eternal battle with its own duality does not.
So cold, so icy that one burns one's fingers on him! Every hand is startled when touching him. – And for that very reason some think he glows. — Nietzsche
Mea culpa… I was typing early in the morning, at great speed, and without my required coffee IV drip: I naturally meant Night of the Long Knives.
"There is absolutely no reason to try to sell this as a modern story, nothing about it is modern as any meaningful parallels to today are non-existent".
Surprised you got out from under the rock you're living under to go see the film. Even one only watched FOX news and listened to Rush Limbaugh that statement would be idiotic.
Tough, but fair. You definitely make a strong case for your point.