It's also a very different film from the other three I've caught this week, far more austere: this is a low-budget independent movie, so it just has a cast of A-list actors led by the stars of The English Patient and Machine Gun Preacher, an army of real Main Battle Tanks and Humvees, and a script by William Shakespeare.
Do you need anything else?
Coriolanus is one of Shakespeare's less-well-known plays, although no less an authority than T.S. Eliot thought it was his best. It tells the story of the Roman general Coriolanus, a man of inflexible strength, and the betrayal that turned him against his city.
This is regarded as a difficult play; but it's also one that has resonated down the centuries, fitting unexpectedly in every new context: to Beethoven, it was about the spiritual isolation of the romantic hero; Eliot saw in it an image of the rise of fascism, a deadly farce; to Brecht, it was a Marxist parable; and today, in the hands of Ralph Fiennes - director, producer and lead actor - it serves as a mirror for our fragmented, photo-manipulated, tribally sophisticated society.
This film updates the action from the fifth century B.C. into a modern Balkan landscape, where characters like General Martius and the hill-country tribal warlord Aufidius fit effortlessly; to add to the effect, there are some odd incongruities - the Romans retain their classical paganism, but the iconography of the rival Volsces is Christian, perhaps specifically Catholic like the Croats: the result is a story that defies time and place while remaining rooted in the visceral realities of belief and nationalism, and the way they unravel in war; needless to say, the play also finds very contemporary resonance in the events of the Arab Spring.
The production also modernizes by making the story interact with the rhythms of the media age, slicing the script into soundbites, overlapping sections of dialogue and intercutting different scenes, as arguments interrupt speeches and broadcasts silence conversations: the interplay between screen and audience, inherent in any movie, appears in diverse and effective ways. The script isn't afraid to make dramatic edits, either - one character, who survives in Shakespeare's play, commits a Roman suicide in this version. Blood from slit wrists dribbles from smart white shirt cuffs; there's no sense of incongruity in the combination of ancient and contemporary elements, nor in the violent change to the narrative. It's only with hindsight that I realise how disparate the well-integrated the components of this film are: the setting they combine to create is completely believable.
Not every juxtaposition is completely successful, of course: there's a coyness to the opening, which seems a little shy to introduce the unfamiliar cadences of Renaissance dialogue alongside its harshly-framed news-camera images; but thankfully, this problem quickly resolves itself, and after the first ten or twenty minutes, there's only the occasional stumble on the poetic rhythms of the dialogue.
It seems churlish to say that Fiennes, who is almost single-handedly responsible for this movie and its triumph, suffers most from this in the opening scenes: perhaps because he was directing himself for the first time, perhaps because his jagged, abrasive interpretation of the character is deliberately biting at his own poetry; perhaps because his interpretation of his character seemed most at odds with the reading that Shakespeare's words suggest to me. But there's no question that this is a terrific performance: this proud, disciplined soldier is by turns savage, shell-shocked, tender, lost, and vengeful, both adamantine hero and all-too-knowing cynic.
Gerard Butler's Aufidius has some similar moments of strangeness, though this conveys an appropriate, ambiguous depth, with hints of a NCO's flatness under the fine words of the resistance General. The supporting performances are roundly excellent: Brian Cox as the amiable moderate Menenius, probably the moral core of the play, or at least the most likeable character; Vanessa Redgrave as Coriolanus' iron-willed mother; and as John Hannah the populist leader Brutus.
Impressively, one of the best performances was from the Balkan actor playing Aufidius' second-in-command: not only did he perform his lines flawlessly, but he did it with a Scottish accent; how many British stars could do the same in Serbo-Croat?
Another unexpected voice was that of Channel 4 News anchorman John Snow. His first newsflash provoked a loud, happy laugh from the audience, but he immediately silenced his critics, because his performance was excellent, effortlessly blending the metre of the script with his familiar newsroom rhythms to create something at once familiar and exotic, and giving the play an extra level of reality and strangeness that intensified its existing strengths.
But, just as important as the acting, this stripped version gives the energy and thrust of the play itself new emphasis.
To take one slow-burning example that's only really consummated in the final frames, the film draws out the homoerotic subtext in the dance of mutual obsession between Coriolanus and his opponent-turned-ally Aufidius; this is something that's definitely present in Shakespeare's original text, and it's presented as a natural development of their clash of physicality, ego and emotion, rather than being overplayed or thrust into the story for any sort of shock value. That sort of detail is truly striking, and gives this play an unexpected, almost shocking modernity.
That same modernity is evident in Shakespeare's candid take on politics - and particularly, on democratic politics. A conservative minority regime is holding power. Menenius, both liked and distrusted by everyone, candidly challenges the leaders of the populist opposition that they are only interested in their own ambitions; they respond by proving him right, and proceed to destroy a good man - and almost imperil their country. The electorate are portrayed in a way that rings true - a mix of cowardice and courage, confidence and weakness, at once sovereign and enslaved, driven above all else by their desire for freedom, and their fear of consequences: at once babel voices, and ultimate arbiters.
Not for nothing is Coriolanus one of the few works of literature that modern liberal democracies have banned.
But it's Coriolanus who is the centre of the film, and a particularly modern centre, his motives opaque, his actions a psychological puzzle. Perhaps he embodies Roman - and Renaissance - ideas of virtue, but these are undermined by his defection, and by the integrity he retains afterwards; he could be seen as a tragic protagonist, but it's hard to say whether he really has a fatal flaw, or if his disgrace is simply the result of opportunistic political dirty tricks - and hard, eventually, to feel pity for him. Instead, what we're given is a compelling, convincing portrait of a man, a certain type of man, his strengths locked up with his weaknesses, his emotions and his self-discipline inseparable; and it's a portrait that depicts its subject without trying to distill his complexity into explanations.
This film is a considerable triumph for Fiennes, his actors, and his largely Serbian team behind the camera; kudos also goes to screenwriter John Logan, whose eclectic resumé includes the CGI animated comedy Rango, Scorsese's Oscar-nominated fantasy Hugo, Tom Cruise vehicle The Last Samurai, the dire final movie of the pre-reboot Star Trek franchise, the next James Bond movie and - perhaps most significantly of all - extensive rewrite work on Gladiator.
That last credit, which I found out about after writiing this review, is perhaps a little disappointing: Gladiator contains the same key themes we find here: jealous rivalry between generals, in an Ancient Rome where the parallels to modern mass-media and political culture are clearly drawn. The connection feels a little too knowing, a little too Hollywood.
Nonetheless, I don't think any of that is absent from the Shakespeare play; I don't think it takes away from the success of this film. And so I'll stick with my original conclusion.
This is a truly splendid movie, and one which brings alive a truly splendid work of literature, reiterating what connoisseurs have known for a long time; "Shakespeare’s most assured artistic success", in the words of perhaps the greatest poet of the twentieth century. And it still has everything to say to us today.
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