Coriolanus Blu-ray

Gerard Butler and a steely-eyed Vanessa Redgrave join Fiennes in his version of Shakespeare's play, updated to modern-day Belgrade. It's a chillingly relevant adaptation, says Milo Wakelin.

Filmed on location in Belgrade, Ralph Fiennes’s adaptation of one of Shakespeare’s most controversial plays retains the original text, but clarifies the story and updates the setting to a modern-day civil war. The tale of a general who triumphs on the battlefield only to find himself ill-equipped in the political arena, Coriolanus feels chillingly relevant in an era where swiftly-won wars have given way to division and unrest.

Fiennes’ directorial debut captures the horror of urban warfare using hand-held camerawork intercut with news footage (featuring a terrific cameo from newsreader Jon Snow). This grey hell of dust and rubble proves to be the only environment in which Coriolanus feels totally at home. Shaven-headed, tattooed and clad in body armour, Fiennes cuts an unexpectedly powerful physical presence in the film’s numerous action sequences.

Outside the fury of battle, the Roman general comes across as subdued and awkward; uncomfortable in the spotlight, distant even from his wife, Virgilia (an ethereally beautiful if underused Jessica Chastain), and totally in thrall to his mother, Volumnia (Vanessa Redgrave). It’s a subtle, self-contained take on one of Shakespeare’s most complex warriors.

His opponent, Gerard Butler’s Tullus Aufidius, is everything Coriolanus is not: confident in his leadership on and off the battlefield, and a far more obviously heroic presence. Butler has played beefcakes before (and in fact, he’s also played Shakespeare before, in the ensemble of Steven Berkoff’s 1996 Coriolanus revival), and his naturalistic performance is an effective counterbalance to Fiennes’ quiet intensity.

Despite all this testosterone, it’s Redgrave who dominates every scene. Her steely-eyed performance as Volumnia is astonishing, and the only conceivable reason she wasn’t nominated Best Supporting Actress at the 2012 Oscars is because the Academy was scared of her (and rightly so).

More than the mud, blood and explosions, her unflinching fanaticism captures the horror that lies at the heart of of civil war: a mother who would proudly send her son to die.

Milo Wakelin on 30th April 2012
Author of 103 reviews