Shakespeare Meets CNN

Rating: 7/10 (21 August 2012)

People who complain about this play being set in modern times are missing a vital fact about Shakespeare himself: he set Julius Cesar in Roman times, but yet his soldiers yell "fire" in battle, the actors often wore Elisabethan battledress, not togas, and they speak of the "clock striking"...long before Rome had striking clocks. If William were alive today, his actors would wear modern dress. There's nothing sacred about chainmail and doublets.
Now for the film. It's a pared-down streamlined version of the play, which as Fiennes himself says was done to get to the story and circumvent somewhat what he called "the density of the language." I found some of the camera work jittery and annoying, particularly when the jumpy scenes occur outside the context of media reporting. However, within the context of the production, it worked. I found it gripping, in that it made the brutality of war and rebellion a reality for the viewer.
I have studied Coriolanus at university and it was never one of my favourite Shakespeare plays, nor even my favourite of the tragedies. However in this production it's plain that Coriolanus' arrogance and self-righteousness is his downfall; as someone once said: God deliver us from men who "know" they're right! There's a definite resonance Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar" in several scenes.
Vanessa Redgrave gives a sterling performance as Volumnia, the she-wolf who whelped the dragon. You can definitely see where Sonny Boy got his pride. Their face-off is a wonderful piece of staging.