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.
Sold as a modern day adaptation, this is anything but. Fiennes and screenwriter John Logan have simply updated the technology and architecture and very little actual adapting has been done. The story is still the same except instead of 17th century Roman armaments, battles are fought with machine guns, rocket launchers and tanks as war is waged between the Romans and the Volsces. In short, there is very little that is “modern” about this story which creates a highly confused storyline, not that there is much of a story to begin with. Now don’t confuse this sentiment with the idea modern day parallels can’t be made in terms of the content and atrocities contained within the story, I’m speaking purely in the presentation of the material, which almost seems at conflict with itself.
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.
