Low budget, but good

Rating: 7/10 (4 July 2012)

If one can't have Hollywood epic AND Shakespeare (as it seems one can't, barring Branagh's Henry V) this is probably ideal. A play like "Coriolanus" cries out for bigger battle scenes when filmed, but all the scenes in the field seem rather cramped. Apart from that, it's brilliant. The cast is excellent, and the handling of the blank verse expertly. Missing out on the credits, I had a feeling that it was directed by Julie Taymor who did that brilliant "Titus" some years ago, and was surprised that Fiennes himself did the thing. But good show of a rarely staged and even more rarely filmed play from Shakespeare's dark streak in the first decade of the 1600s, and as in "Julius Caesar" Shakespeare really has it in for the common people in this number - feckless and fawning to a man. I can't put a finger on Fiennes' Coriolanus or Redgrave's Volumnia, but Gerard Butler stands out as Aufidius. I've always felt that "Coriolanus" is really his tragedy; I believe this character makes the longest journey in the play, emotionally. Hard at his heels is Brian Cox's Menenius. Capital bit of acting that squeezes every bit of tragedy out of the part.