Coriolanus
United Kingdom 2011, 122 mins
Director: Ralph Fiennes
Starring: Vanessa Redgrave, Gerard Butler, Brian Cox, Ralph Fiennes
Director: Ralph Fiennes
Starring: Vanessa Redgrave, Gerard Butler, Brian Cox, Ralph Fiennes
For his first film as director, Ralph Fiennes has tackled one of Shakespeare's most challenging plays - about a man who regards power as his right, but is unwilling to make the compromises required.
The setting is a modern state (possibly in the Balkans) under threat from a neighbouring country. Coriolanus is a general whose efforts mean that Rome is triumphant, but when its people reject his rule he changes sides.
In Fiennes' hands (both as actor and director), he becomes a character in conflict with himself. At one level a model citizen, his arrogance is such that he cannot accept he has to play the game by any rules but his own, and no one, neither wife nor mother nor friends, can influence him.
His tragedy is that he might have been great, had he but a scintilla of humility. This is a magnificent debut by one of the UK's finest actors, which will become the defining cinematic text for the play.
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