"Coriolanus" is a classic tragedy of Shakespeare, whose structure is exquisite and the theme is profoundly comparable to the four tragedies. In the adaptation of the film of the same name, Ralph Fiennes, who is also an actor and director, has a deep connection with Shakespeare. He studied acting at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in the United Kingdom and was admitted to the Royal National Theatre. He was deeply trained in theater and has a solid and profound acting skills, which can be seen in many movies he starred in. In the film, he not only won two Oscar nominations for best actor, but also the only actor to win a Tony Award for the role of Hamlet on Broadway. He also won the William Shakespeare Award from the Shakespeare Theatre in Washington. It is not difficult to understand why Ralph chose Shakespeare's dramatic works for his directorial debut. There are a thousand Hamlet for one thousand readers, and in the same way, each reader's interpretation of "Coriolanus" will be different, including Ralph, who was deeply influenced by Shakespeare's plays.
Generally speaking, this is an adaptation that is very faithful to the original. No matter the plot, characters, themes, and even the original lines are used directly, there are no major deletions or changes. However, one of the most obvious and interesting adaptations is that the director directly and without error put the story of ancient Rome into the modern shell. You can say that this set is the director's ingenuity, but it can also be regarded as one of the biggest shortcomings of the director in handling the script.
Different from other adapted movies, like the Japanese film master Akira Kurosawa, when he changed Shakespeare’s "Macbeth" into "Spider's Nest" and "King Lear" into "Ran", he only used Shakespeare. The main line of the script and the setting of the characters, the specific background, age, and identity of the characters, the director is all Japanese, and the entire movie is rooted in local culture. But look at "Coriolanus", as small as the names of the characters, as large as all the main scenes related to the story, are all presented on the screen intact. Although everything is based on modern times, the political system of ancient Rome has not changed accordingly. The Senate, the exile system, the necessary procedures for showing scars and seeking opinions from civilians, these important and directly related elements are actually The movies are also copied and reproduced one by one. Another important point is that Shakespeare's lines also appear throughout a movie with a modern background, which is even rarer.
Some viewers may say that this is the director's insistence on Shakespeare's classic works, and it is also a reflection of his retro creativity. However, based on the modern era, the main elements of Shakespeare’s text have been fully used, and the problems caused are very prominent: the retrospect of the system that has destroyed thousands of years, the drama directly overhead the age, the actors don’t speak human words, etc... …You say it is a classic reappearance, time and space have been transformed into thousands of years later, naturally it is not. Speaking of a film with a modern look and feel, the important changes mentioned above obviously make it very dissonant. The whole film is always in an embarrassment that is neither completely retro nor completely changed. This makes the viewers. The most direct feeling is: too strange, and unnecessary. The whole film is more like itching through the boots, and it hasn't been scratched to the sore spot.
In my personal opinion, if you want to keep the main elements, it is better to make a costume film completely, so that all the scenes will return to ancient Rome, and all the strange things will be solved satisfactorily. But we know that if it is completely retro, then it is ancient Roman in the context, not the current, which is completely useless for the current artistic creation, and it is an unqualified attempt.
Therefore, the director does not have a retro style. From this point of view, he still has good ideas and a feeling of serving the past to the present. But unfortunately, he chose to place the story in the modern era, and he may have added a lot of gunfights and blasting scenes for commercial considerations; in order to emphasize the contemporary concept, he even repeatedly used the frame of television media. Role; Matthews defected to the hip-hop music in the Orpheidius barracks and the inexplicable atmosphere like a nightclub...These things make this film closer to the brainless Hollywood commercial blockbuster. However, out of personal considerations, the director insisted on preserving the original scenes and dialogue while adding the above scenes, which is really ridiculous.
It is obvious that Ralph has a deep understanding of Shakespeare's plays and his performance skills, but this does not mean that the adaptation can be very successful. The biggest taboo he commits is to drift between the ancient and the modern, and the meaning is ambiguous. Neither the reflection on the ancient nor the criticism of the present are presented in this movie of his. Familiarity with Shakespeare does not mean that Shakespeare can be interpreted perfectly. This is similar to the mistakes made by many contemporary scholars to a certain extent.
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