Rifle-Toting Fiennes Mows Down Rebels in Bloody `Coriolanus': Berlin FilmBy Catherine Hickley - Feb 16, 2011 1:00 AM GMT+0100
Directed by Ralph Fiennes, the movie which transposes Shakespeare's play to the modern era, is showing in competition at the Berlin Film Festival.
The film is a modern-day updating of William Shakespeare's play using the original text, and showing in competition at the 2011 Berlin Film Festival.
A scarred, shaven, tattooed Ralph Fiennes in combat gear and wielding an assault rifle shoots up independence fighters in a burned-out city. This is Shakespeare, Fiennes-style.
His first full-length feature as director, “Coriolanus,” is showing in competition at the Berlin Film Festival. It’s a blood-soaked, action-packed update of one of Shakespeare’s trickier plays to stage. Fiennes and scriptwriter John Logan kept the original text though they cut large chunks and added scenes.
Shot in Belgrade, “Coriolanus” is a violent political thriller with iambic pentameter dialogue, homoerotic undertones and some fine acting from Royal Shakespeare Company veterans including Vanessa Redgrave as Fiennes’s dominant, ambitious mother, the majestically named Volumnia. As with most Shakespeare plays, the story is universal: War-mongering political leaders who care little for ordinary folk are sadly just as present on the world stage today as they were in the 17th century.
Rioting Romans, demanding bread, storm the central grain store at the opening of the movie: Caius Martius (later Coriolanus) confronts them with his brutal, ferociously equipped troops. Meanwhile, the neighboring Volscians, led by Gerard Butler as Tullus Aufidius, are threatening Roman territory. Martius’s victory, secured in an improbable one-on-one knife fight with Aufidius, brings him glory and honor.
Bid for Consul
His iron-nerved, militaristic mother (she would have made a decent general herself as played by Redgrave) sees this as an opportunity to launch his political career. Yet Coriolanus messes up by showing contempt for the people of Rome when he is supposed to be canvassing for their votes. Pressing the flesh is just not his thing -- he prefers ripping it apart.
Othello had jealousy, Macbeth got ambition: Coriolanus’s fatal flaw is tactlessness. Banished from Rome, Fiennes spends time in the wilderness, emerging with lots of hair to seek out Aufidius and exact his revenge.
The relationship between these two warriors is fascinating: They swear to hate each other, and yet as he accepts Coriolanus’s offer to lead an attack on Rome, Aufidius also declares his passion.
It’s all in Shakespeare’s original, so this is not about sexing it up for a modern audiences: “But that I see thee here,/ Thou noble thing, more dances my rapt heart/ Than when I first my wedded mistress saw/ Bestride my threshold.”
Grisly End
Volumnia’s impassioned plea to Coriolanus changes his mind about attacking Rome and leads him to sign a peace agreement with the Volscians. Yet things get grisly again before the end.
Newscasters on a 24-hour channel called Fidelis narrate off-stage events -- in blank verse -- accompanied by video footage. Believe it or not, that almost works.
The conviction of all of the actors in delivering their lines injects freshness and immediacy into Shakespeare’s text. It rarely seems incongruous, and sometimes the language is so economical it takes your breath away.
Fiennes, 48, has played Coriolanus many times on stage and told a Berlin press conference he had the project in mind for many years, seeing it as natural fodder for an action movie. Funding for the film, which according to Premier Public Relations Ltd. will be released by year end, proved difficult.
It’s bold of Fiennes to try to make a film that will appeal to Shakespeare fans and action-movie addicts alike. He just might pull it off.
Rating: ***
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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-02-16/r...erlin-film.htmlShakespeare could have been filmmaker, says Ralph Fiennes6 February 2011, Wednesday / REUTERS, BERLIN
William Shakespeare would have been a great scriptwriter if he were alive today because his writing fits the cinema, British actor Ralph Fiennes said on Monday after the world premiere of his film “Coriolanus.”
Fiennes, who directs and stars in the modern-day adaptation of Shakespeare’s 17th century tale of a renegade Roman general, said the tragedy is a timeless political thriller about power, manipulation and public unrest. He made the film in Belgrade. “I can’t help but think that if Shakespeare were alive today he would write very easily for the cinema, for the big screen,” Fiennes said after “Coriolanus” was applauded at a news conference. He said he would like to film more Shakespeare.
“Coriolanus” is a hard-hitting tragedy about the legendary fifth century BC Roman general but set in the 21st century and its tense inner city battle scenes were filmed in Belgrade. The general, a heroic military leader played by Fiennes, falls out with Rome after a misguided switch into politics. The film also stars Vanessa Redgrave as his pushy mother and Gerald Butler as his nemesis.
Wearing modern combat gear and uniforms, the general is ultimately banished from Rome and switches allegiances to support his erstwhile enemy Tullus Auficius, played by Butler, to extract revenge on Rome.
The film is set against the backdrop of a country caught up in an economic crisis and long war with the masses -- clad in 21st century clothes -- enraged by food shortages and inequality, timeless ingredients for tension.
“This is our world, you know,” Fiennes told Reuters. “We switch on CNN and we see people in the square in Cairo. All over the world we see these things -- Athens, or Paris or demonstrations in Burma.”
Fiennes, making his directorial debut with the film that he also produced, said he has been thinking about making the film for the last 10 years after also playing the title role on the stage in London. “The idea of Coriolanus as a film was inside my head and heart for some time,” he said. “All around me, constantly there were things happening around the world that echoed the events in the story. I wanted it to be just now, today, as accessible and as present as it could be.”
Coriolanus is one of the 16 films competing for the Berlinale’s top Golden and Silver Bear awards. The festival, one of the world’s most important, runs until Feb. 20.
Butler said he was delighted to have the chance to act in the film about a decaying, overextended empire as a change of pace from the romantic comedies that made him famous. “I had done my fair share of dramas but they’re not the ones the people tend to remember ( ) ,” Butler said, adding he had even performed in a stage performance of “Coriolanus” early in his career. “They only tend to remember the romantic comedies. This was a chance to work a different muscle and try something different.”
http://www.todayszaman.com/news-235693-sha...ph-fiennes.html