The Bard bears up in the 20th Century.

Rating: Null/10 (15 January 2012)

"If Greece has taught us that marble bleeds, Rome shows us that dust flowers." Cecil Roberts.
Shakespeare's tragedy, Coriolanus, directed by Ralph Fiennes, has been successfully translated to the screen, just as Richard III (1995) was by Richard Loncraine. Both productions shift the scene to modern times, and despite my prejudice about tinkering with the Bard, I liked both, in part because Fiennes is a fine Coriolanus and Ian McKellen a better than fine Richard.
It's modern Rome, besieged by angry citizens whose leader is Gerard Butler's Aufidius, longtime enemy of Coriolanus. When the haughty, anti-commoner Coriolanus is banished from Rome, he joins up with his old enemy to turn on Rome.
It seems like a perfect alliance until Coriolanus's formidable mother, Volumnia, played by Vanessa Redgrave, and his wife, VIrgilia, played by Jessica Chastain, confront him. To see the four leads on the screen, along with the reliable Brian Cox as Menenius, is to witness the best of cinema acting, although Redgrave dominates as she pleads, cajoles, and finesses her son to speak gently to the commoners and to compromise the siege.
There is something static about the filming, perhaps because Fiennes sees it in its Shakespearean form and himself as a theatrical performer. "Static" even though Fiennes relies on MTV-like quick cuts to enhance the action and perhaps mitigate the elegant prose for regular film goers.
The contemporary thematic parallels with the play are obvious: the puzzle that still is the Balkans, or Iraq and Iran for that matter, with families pitted against each other, the citizenry versus the military, and power another deal away.
But the play's the thing, and no matter how much gifted director and adapter play with the original, Shakespeare is always there with stunning dialogue, deep characterization, and humanity still crazy after all these years.