Coriolanus

The actor Ralph Fiennes directs and stars in Shakespeare’s Coriolanus.  The title character is a fierce and successful military leader upon whom is thrust political leadership that he has not aspired to and to which he is utterly ill-equipped.  It’s not going to end well, and that’s why they call it tragedy.

Coriolanus is devoted to the idea of Rome, which inspires his heroism in its defense.  But he despises most Romans and thinks it would be insincere to show them the least civility, which doesn’t bode well for his political career.  Fiennes does a good job playing Coriolanus, an oddball for whom “curmudgeon” doesn’t begin to tell the story.

Unfortunately, Coriolanus is propelled into the peacetime limelight by his ultra-ambitious mother (Vanessa Redgrave) and an able and well-meaning politician (Brian Cox).  Redgrave and Cox are splendid, and their performances are highlights of Coriolanus.  Coriolanus is well-acted, including by Jessica Chastain, the wonderful Irish actor James Nesbitt and even, surprisingly, Gerard Butler.

Fiennes the director has done well to set Shakespeare’s tale of ancient Rome into the present.  This story of war and politics comes alive in today’s world of cable television news, with its crawling captions and pundits, protest demonstrations and soldiers in Humvees.  By stripping away the swords and togas, Fiennes helps us recognize the ambition, personal stubbornness, political treachery and the fickleness of public opinion at the core of the story.  As Shakespeare probably wanted to, Fiennes is able to put his audience into realistic warfare.  Coriolanus was filmed in the Balkans and, indeed, Butler certainly looks like a Serbian warlord from the very recent past.

The problem with Coriolanus is that we admire Coriolanus’s high-mindedness less than we cringe at his social obtuseness.   But Fiennes (and Redgrave and Cox) have given us one of the best cinematic adaptations of Shakespeare.