I am not familiar with Shakespeare’s Coriolanus so I did not bring any internal vision of how the film adaptation should be. I am also a huge Ralph Fiennes fan. Coriolanus’ cast is top notch, and the acting was amazing. I did feel sympathy for Coriolanus as a character although the pacing of the narrative was off-perhaps intentionally to reflect the people’s betrayal. I did not think all the parallels between the hearing and a tv talk show quite worked although I understand what Fiennes was trying to do. Fiennes was paralleling how talk matters more than deed in both the play and in our current political arena. I did not like Coriolanus as a film.
Perhaps Ralph Fiennes should stick to acting. I did not like his directing style. One fight scene has two men tumbling out of a second story window as they continued to grapple after landing on the ground. He is still sporting that dragon tattoo from Red Dragon, y’all. It has been 9 years! He has so many agonized, rage-filled scene-chewing close-ups that for a second, I thought that he hired Tobey Maguire as an acting/directing consultant. Your face is streaked with blood in battle. How original. Yawn. You have a long shaggy walk in exile. Oh, now you’re going to shave your head so you’re back and badder than ever. Don’t these tropes come from cheesy 80s movies and tv shows? I struggled to stay awake to the end.
Vanessa Redgrave stole the whole show. Only her scenes thoroughly worked and were flawless. Still I would love to see a Shakespeare adaptation with an actual Italian mother actress as that character in her last scene. I think that it would be a more passionate and convincing scene than mannered and well-played.