Good adaptation of a Shakespeare play

Rating: 8/10 (9 August 2012)

This is a movie adaptation of the William Shakespeare play Coriolanus. I had never heard of this play before and I suppose its a good thing to have another Shakespeare play adapted in comparison to the more well- known ones including Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet.
Even though the play itself takes place in ancient Rome, Ralph Fiennes decided to make a modernisation of this play. I have to say that it has worked very well and can be compared to Baz Luhrmann's modernisation of Romeo and Juliet, even though I thought that particular movie overall was just watchable. I am not actually that fond of Shakespeare's plays mainly because I find it so difficult to understand the language he uses which isn't used in this day and age. But this movie told me that he knows how to write a good story. Even if you had never read or even studied this particular Shakespeare play at school, you can tell that the dialogue in this movie is typically Shakespearian. But despite this, you don't really need to understand the language in order to understand what is going on in the movie. After all, it's much more difficult to understand if you're reading the text alone. I guess it was better to use the Shakespearian text rather than modernised English given the setting of this movie. Ralph Fiennes played his role very well, especially when his character becomes angry.
All in all, this is good movie adaptation. Even though I never intend to read any of Shakespeare's plays, I guess for the first time I appreciated Shakespeare, not for his language but for his story.