Then, now and ever

Rating: Null/10 (9 August 2013)

This is the first time Shakespeare's unsung masterpiece is brought to the big screen. That alone is reason to praise this movie, and a reason for me to watch it.
My rough estimate is that the screenplay kept about 20% of the play's text, maybe less. The #1 priority of the screenwriter was clearly not to put off audiences with too much of Shakespeare's language (which is even more difficult in this work than in most plays). Thus we have long stretches without dialog, filled mostly with battle scenes. If you are going to produce a 10 million dollar film, you'd better not to cater only to a niche audience of Shakespeare buffs like myself. So they focus on lines that a) are the less difficult to understand and b) establish the characters. Long speeches are often cut to 10 words or less, and more often than not eliminated. So the choices in the script make a world of difference. Is the play's spirit kept? Is John Logan successful? Not fully, but mostly.
Coriolanus, like the bard's other Roman plays, is a treatise on the state and society, worth more than dozens of political science books. He shows the problems both with democratic government and with anti- democratic forces more than one and a half century before the French Revolution. The role of the "people" in the political process is at the margins of previous plays, but in Coriolanus it is fully developed, and Kudos to the movie-makers for stressing that theme.
The caprice of the mob is a factor throughout the movie. Key scenes are kept, as is a crucial exchange of words whereby Coriolanus and the people are compared to the wolf who wants do devour and a lamb - the powerful general being the latter. Also kept is Coriolanus' denunciation: "With every minute you do change a mind/And call him noble that was now your hate,/Him vile that was your garland". Logan did not miss the importance of this theme, avoiding the trap of succumbing to a simplistic story of proud "tyrants". It is true that he made the mistake of giving the mob too much justification for directing their rage to Caius Marcius in the beginning (he is in charge of enforcing a state of emergency) - but the latter scenes of Marcius trying to get "voices" (votes) among the common people make it clear that their relation is not simply one of righteous revolt, but something more complex. He is rejected for being too "proud" to exhibit his war scars – but it is really the mob that is too proud to accept a leader that does not cater to such a caprice. He is expelled, but just a few gestures and clever words would have made him a god before the people.
Coriolanus' accusation to the angry, volatile mob is spot-on. But the play is also a treatise on the individual: one of the many ironies is that every character in the play, including the general himself, is not more fixed than the masses. Everyone is divided against him or herself and carried by the influence of others. The individual minds mirror the unstable collective. All the character's arcs come full circle, but with an arrow vector that points to a continuation of the loop. And that is why I think the very last speech of the play, where Aufidius regrets what he has just done, should have stayed. The way things end suggest that at least his character reached a resolution to his inner conflict. But no such a thing is possible in "Coriolanus".
No play from Shakespeare is more fit for adaptation to modern times. Coriolanus is more contemporary to the 20th Century than to Shakespeare's England under James Stuart (had the play been written 30 years later after his death, everyone would say the bard was "obviously" talking about the English civil war). The film was shot in Belgrade, and the battle scenes and uniforms direct the viewers to the wars in former Yugoslavia. But the turmoil in the Middle East in the course of the revolution that started in the year this movie was made could be predicted by anyone who watched or read "Coriolanus". Shakespeare is worth a thousand pundits.