A remarkable achievement

Rating: 9/10 (17 June 2012)

Coriolanus was one of Shakespeare's last plays, written after the masterpieces for which the world knows his name. Yet it is certainly one of his least performed and least known works.
May this movie change that.
This is not some "concept" production that contorts the play into the pre-conceived notions of an egotistical director. Quite to the contrary. This is the often astounding product of a man who has thought through Shakespeare's play, seen in it what is powerful and very relevant to our own times, and brought that power out with at times almost overwhelming force. I don't know that I have ever seen a movie that boiled over with more testosterone than this one; it puts Schwarzenegger's movies to shame in that respect. Over and over I marveled at how Fienes found modern-day moments that were, in fact, modern equivalents of the scenes Shakespeare set in Classical Rome.
And yet, there is the greatest respect for Shakespeare's words. They are delivered with astounding clarity, yet in such a way that they sound like almost modern speech, rather than poetry that is 400 years old. There Fienes and Vanessa Redgrave are the true stars. Their every word seems natural, yet delivered in a way that gives all the power and beauty to Shakespeare's verse.
If you hated Shakespeare in high school, you need to see this movie. Trust me, this is not the Shakespeare you had foisted off on you then. This is a masterful interpretation of what has always been treated as a minor Shakespeare play, so masterful that it must make us wonder if we have been misjudging it for four centuries.