I’ve finally now seen the recent film production of Coriolanus, starring and directed by Ralph Fiennes, and it is as I feared, a failure. It’s one of these updating adaptations of a Shakespeare play—in this case the politics and warfare of the early Roman city-state gets refitted with all the latest guns and gizmos. One blurb touts it as “Shakespeare’s Rambo!” The setting becomes a war-torn situation evocative of 1990s-Yugoslavia, yet with distinct states—Fiennes and the screenwriter John Logan retain the all the original names, including that of the rival city-state to Rome, Antium, capital of the Volscians. They also, albeit with much cutting, retain the original text.
The first major problem is that Ralph Fiennes is poorly cast as Coriolanus. There are a number of ways in which he doesn’t fit the part, but the most obvious is that he plays it far too understated-ly to capture the hero’s grandeur, both in manner and language.
Understatement can be an effective way to translate stage drama to film, and this film is fairly ingenious at finding plausible ways for lines originally addressed to larger groups to instead be said in passing to only one or two characters. But this underlines one of the more subtle problems with the adaptation. While life in Shakespeare’s early Rome is very public, so that private scenes are rare, Fiennes’s Rome is more a place of separations and security fences. It makes one feel confined: heavy use of shaky-cam close-ups; scenes in sealed luxury cars; the crowds shoved-together and repetitively composed from the same cast of thirty-or-so extras; a firm line (absent in the text) drawn between the interiors of government buildings and the outdoor forums; and the battles urban-warfare ones with troops darting in-and-out of dim rooms, hallways, and alleys.
But back to Fiennes’ playing of Coriolanus: while he avoids the danger of playing him as acidic and generally disgusted, what he gives us in typical scenes is a very muted and bland Coriolanus, whose actions become puzzling since his intonations and expressions so little prepare us for them; worse, in some scenes calling for declamation, such as his famous “I banish you!” speech, Fiennes plays him as practically a madman, veins bursting, spittle spraying, etc. He presents the wrath of Coriolanus as a psychotic fit.
As for the modernizing elements of the adaptation, the problems are as follows:
1) Modern Warfare: guns, tanks, etc. This is the problem I expected. A drama in which the martial hero matters politically because he is his people’s most potent weapon, and thus a key means of defending their very survival, must become less convincing given a modern combat situation: a single shot or IED can eliminate him. What I didn’t anticipate is the way the loss of the open-aired battlefield changes war’s heroic, valor-displaying feel. The text compels Fiennes and Logan to invent, in the midst of the urban gun-play, an occasion for a hand-to-hand knife duel between Tullus Aufidius and Coriolanus, but the fact that it occurs inside a building removes the opportunity for the army, i.e., Rome-in-arms, to witness it.
2) Modern Politics. In my original post I worried more than I needed about military uniforms giving the patricians a fascistic feel—that is there to some degree, but the film’s political landscape turns out to be too confused for the audience to really think of fascism. The plot make us see we’re supposed to have some respect for Coriolanus, but when he says political things, we’re given no aide in judging what they might signify for this “Rome.” He just seems a moody, uptight, combat-loving guy.
3) Television News. Initially this seems clever. For example, instead of having several plebians argue about the strengths and weaknesses of Coriolanus’ character, these lines are given to a news-analysis panel. Minor inconveniences to certain scenes, such as the ones where Roman or Volscian leaders try to learn whether the enemy is on the march, result from the TV news presence, but the bigger problem is that the public life of Rome is shunted indoors—no one needs to hear from their fellow citizens who have just run from the Senate or the other side of the city to learn what’s happening—it’s all being mediated by the media. But in the play, that mediation of the news most of all belongs to the Senators and tribunes themselves. That allows us to see how the Senators have in their arsenal the substantial power of knowing more about the state’s business, how the tribunes utilize crowd dynamics, and how both sides rely on rhetoric and rumor. So on whose side is this media in Fiennes’ adaptation? Or is it really neutral? It’s never made clear. And besides our uncertainty about that, the result of the TV news presence is that it looks as if any of the plebians could become as well-informed as any patrician or tribune.
4) The plebians become “protesters.” A very serious mistake. In the play, the plebians are obviously poor and uneducated. Their ignorance, unkemptness, and inconstancy often become occasion for mockery. Some of them are thoughtful on their own, but the ease with which they become manipulated by the tribunes, or otherwise become viciously or stupidly mob-like is one of the most powerful aspects of the drama. All that is lost here. No jokes at the plebians’ expense make it past the editing. And they look admirable: they are a group of multi-ethnic dissidents, led not by boorish types, but by a fiery leftist woman and her scholarly-looking counterpart. You often see them wearing scarves, or other intellectual-favored if slightly grungy fashions, and they use cell-phones to film the security forces. They also look soft, with no hint of poverty’s hardening. When they act mob-like, we see no overall ferocity, nor even any particular members with rumble-lust in their eyes. (Beyond failing to capture Shakespeare, this likewise fails to portray the reality of many “protest gatherings” these days attracting hoody and unhinged members, as in the London riots of last summer.) Nor are they shaking their fists and railing at their fellow citizens the patricians in the eye-to-eye manner of the play, but at phalanxes of body-armored riot-police hidden behind plastic shields and black-visored helmets.
When many of the plebians briefly support Coriolanus for consul, we can discern no reason for why they would—we have not seen that they also have to fight on the battlefield. By this and other features, Fiennes has allowed the social feel of the ancient polis to be entirely obscured. And by declining to really give the audience reason to worry about the plebians’ judgment, the play’s critique of the democratic imperative, or more precisely its bringing out the tragic dimension of republican politics, is also lost.
And if you lose that, along with the sense of Coriolanus’ innate nobility, you’ve lost all reason for the play, haven’t you? But Fiennes and Logan don’t understand what’s fundamental to this drama.
I’m guessing that’s because they have not been liberally educated in the real sense, the sense that opens one to classical views. They must have been reading the sorts of agenda-laden and ultimately text-neglecting analyses coming out of contemporary English departments, when they should have been reading the interpretations of Shakespeare coming from politics-n’-literature folks, folks often Strauss-influenced and lurking in Political Science departments. Allan Bloom’s five lively little pages on here on Coriolanus would have taught them far more than the hundreds of pages of what I suspect they slogged through.
So all in all, a confused muddle of a movie. And unlike with the most well-known of the aggressively-updating film adaptations of Shakespeare, Romeo + Juliet, none of the updating features cause us to think with any profit about our own society—there is no compensation for the violence they do the Bard’s original poetic world.
Don’t waste your time.
P.S. Here’s a web review that disagrees with me, here’s another that agrees. Neither of these display much knowledge of Shakespeare, though, and I’d be happy if knowing readers can supply links to better reviews.
August 2nd, 2012 | 9:40 pm
I agree completely with everything Carl writes here.
James Bowman, who is my favorite reviewer (apart from this website, of course), liked it quite a bit, especially its account of honor. He also especially praises Brian Cox as Menenius.
http://www.jamesbowman.net/reviewDetail.asp?pubID=2149
August 3rd, 2012 | 9:17 am
I liked it, too. I’m will not say that I liked it without criticism, but (without reading what others who liked it have written) what I liked was how alien the sensibilities were. Casting Rome into modern times made the contrasts clearer. It also made Shakespeare’s timelessness clear, as well. I thought Coriolanus’ nobility quite evident. It just looks shabbier in modern dress.
No time to elaborate. I’ll be back.
August 3rd, 2012 | 11:39 am
Patrick, yeah, Cox is great as Meninius. And the adaptation’s fashioning him and the tribunes as contemporary politicians works pretty well.
I look forward to hearing more, Kate.
Meantime, I want to plug the BBC radio production (not the horrible 1980s video one) of Coriolanus, available for Ipod purchase at around 24$. That’s what folks should check out instead. Slightly and judiciously edited; fantastic acting throughout.
August 3rd, 2012 | 1:53 pm
Carl Scott’s review is very penetrating, specially in its assertion that the movie’s political landscape is confusing, and prevents one from actually thinking of fascism and its realities. Scott’s critique of modern gizmos, guns, and cars is well taken, at the same time, modern war is made up of them, they have an appeal. An adaptation of Shakespear’s play that brings alive the war time realities of the Yugoslavian conflict, i think, is an achievement and very welcome. The failure to capture the patrician-plebian divide, and the social feel of ancient Rome, is a critique that sounds overjudgemetal. Still have not had the opportunity to see the movie, it just did not come to calgary, wonder why, but the fact that the movie fails to capture Shakespeare seems to be an overstatement.
August 3rd, 2012 | 2:04 pm
Part of the problem with films like these is that, while they are sometimes decent or even good FILMS in and of themselves, they pale in comparison to what Shakespeare actually wrote.
Those who have read Shakespeare are left seeing all the ways the film doesn’t measure up (and the bad judgements of the director become even more obvious, for we know the better options that exist).
August 3rd, 2012 | 7:33 pm
Mr. Cain, the way we see a play when we read it is idiosyncratic. No one else can see it the way we do when we are reading. Naturally, the thing in the mind is better. Showing a play says it should be this way; it should be seen like this. A play filmed is a commitment. A play on the stage is open to a hundred tiny revisions every time it’s performed. I was interested in the way Mr. Fiennes saw Coriolanus, play and character. I agree some things were over the top and some things were rushed. But as a vision of the play, a version of the play, I thought the filmed play worked.
Here, I have to confess that I have never seen a staged version of Coriolanus and it is some years since I read the play, though I read parts after seeing the movie to see what I thought of how it was done. I had sympathy with what was cut. A play is never perfectly done as a movie because the two forms are so different. Because of that, I thought things like having protestors play the mob worked. Because we are right in the actor’s face, understating and underplaying worked. Where Fiennes makes actions big, like in wrath, it is too much; we are too close. You’re right there, Carl, that doesn’t work. I thought Vanessa Redgrave did a better job, although I thought her costuming often made her look silly. But as modern dress it worked to make a point about her character. But the way she toned down Volumnia for close-ups, retaining intensity; Fiennes could have been schooled by her. He needed a director who could objective about what he was doing.
I agree that Cox as Meneninus was wonderful. I also think that the Yugoslavian conflict made warlord combat seem at home, although my impression was that we had gone beyond that particular place, into some future conflict as the whole thing had a Mad Max flavor to it. I’ve seen many staged versions of Shakespeare plays set in other times and I don’t usually like them. Ian McKellen’s Richard III, a movie, is set in England of the late 30′s, but because of the kind of government, it seems a fascist place. It looks right. The War of the Roses was a crazy time.
In Coriolanus, the mob as protestors and the way TV was used as commentary was a good translation to the modern way of doing things. I thought it would make the play much more accessible to the young, who would not understand the static nature of the play as it would be staged if set in Rome. With all of that, I would still like to see a well-staged version of the play set traditionally, something like the play in my head when I read it.
August 4th, 2012 | 6:45 am
That James Bowman site is very impressive. He’s on a media-analysis kick of late, and it shows in his review of Coriolanus.
Kate, you make some good points, especially about the different impressions formed by a reading, a play, and a film, and you’re right about the setting being as much Mad Max as 90s-Yugoslavia. I’m sticking to my guns, though. Maybe viewers who don’t know the play might like the film because they realize having some plot with their action is nice, and/or because Fiennes tones down the Shakespearean aspect of the language to a quite accessible level. But it’s still pretty muddled, and that’s never accessible nor winning.
August 7th, 2012 | 12:27 pm
Mr Scott,
As constructive and interesting your review is, I have to disagree on every point you made. I do respect your opinion but, first of all, how can you say that the movie was “as you feared”? Did you have prejudices before seeing it? And I’d just like to point out that, if the original names and text hadn’t been retained, well that wouldn’t be Coriolanus anymore, and they might as well have changed the title and the whole story.
The other huge thing that’s annoying in your review is the fact that you consider Ralph Fiennes as “poorly cast in Coriolanus”. I can understand that you don’t like the actor in general, but to say that he doesn’t fit the part… now that’s a little pretentious, if I may say, don’t you think? I mean, if HE doesn’t fit the part, I wonder who would. I am sorry but if one actor can “capture the hero’s grandeur, both in manner and language”, that’s really him. I mean, have you seen Fiennes performing Shakespeare on stage? One would have to be blind and deaf not to find that he’s perfect at acting. Moreover, Fiennes is known to be one of the best Shakespearian actor in U.K. nowadays; he’s been acting in Shakespeare’s plays since he was a teenager, so who are we to criticize his acting? Even when his movies were flops, the reviews have always praised his acting, since his very first appearance on stage and camera.
I think his interpretation of Coriolanus is almost perfect. One thing you must know about Fiennes is that he’s very passionate, so when he acts he gives everything he has. That is obvious in Coriolanus, and I guess if you call it a “psychotic fit” or madness of the character, maybe you didn’t understand him at all. You can’t teach him his job, you know :)
Furthermore, you say that “Fiennes’ Rome […] makes one feel confined”, and you mention a “cast of thirty-or-so extras”. Well, do you think that it would be different on stage? I mean this is an adaptation of a play, not an American blockbuster. The idea of “feeling confined” is natural, since everything happens in the same places during the play. And no need to have thousands of extras, because the purpose here is that we keep in mind certain faces that symbolize the mob and the ideas they’re proclaiming.
Now about the duel between Coriolanus and Aufidius, maybe you didn’t see it that way, but it’s here to show something, not to the army but to us, the audience; it’s about the nature of the relationship between these two characters. The images speak for themselves.
As for the military uniforms “giving the patricians a fascistic feel”, I never heard that before. Fascism has absolutely nothing to do with it. And if you can’t judge what Coriolanus’ speeches might signify to Rome, maybe you should listen more carefully. Coriolanus is a very complicated character, so there’s nothing as a “good guy” or “bad guy”. He is a tough warrior who wants to lead but refuses to make demagogy (that’s in the play too). “Moody”? Perhaps, but so is the crowd.
About the TV news in the movie, this is an important aspect, and, as you said, a clever one. Its presence is a reference to our actual society. I don’t see why you’d prefer to hear the Senators telling the news rather than the television. Remember it’s a modern adaptation, so everything is translated, and messengers become journalists. The important is not to know on whose side the media is in the movie, because that’s not the problem. I’ll say it again, this is a modern adaptation. So yes, the plebeians can become as well-informed as any patrician, and they use cell-phones to film security forces. That’s what mobs do nowadays; and the poor now are also different from those of Shakespeare’s time. Did you expect them to be in rags and tatters, and not to be able to read? Of course they become protesters, that’s the whole point of the story! They start the mess because they are manipulated; this is one of the most obvious aspects of the movie.
You see, everything is very clear in this movie. If there are some things you didn’t understand, I respectfully suggest you to watch it again, and then you’ll understand better. A movie such as this one must be seen several times.
Finally, I can’t believe you wrote that “Fiennes and Logan don’t understand what’s fundamental to this drama”..! Because, on the contrary, like I said, all the important aspects are made very clear. But it is very subtle, so maybe you can’t get them the first time you watch the movie. Logan and Fiennes knew their subject perfectly well; and Fiennes is very professional, he hasn’t done a thing without thinking first.
Besides, how can you dare say that, about the things “you suspect they slogged through”? How can you suspect anything? This kind of comment shows – and forgive me – how little you know about Fiennes. Maybe that’s the reason why you didn’t understand his movie. He knows more about Shakespeare than you’ll ever do, I think. As for saying that about Logan… you know his work, don’t you? So, again, who are you to judge him that way?
My conclusion would be that perhaps you should have seen only the play instead of the movie; then you’d have been fully satisfied. Indeed it must have been a waste of time for you, since you don’t seem to have understood it. And I’m sorry for you because you missed something – a masterpiece.
And yes, I have read the original play (and many others by Shakespeare), I do know something about acting, and I know a lot about Cinema (and this movie) :)
I hope I didn’t offend you in any way, and if I did I’m sorry. But I had to answer. And, again, I respect your opinion; I just like to say what I think.
Cordially.
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