ROMAN RUIN

Some of Shakespeare’s plays seem awkward when performed in modern dress, and some of them seem perfectly attired. The Roman tragedy Coriolanus is of the latter sort. I saw it in modern dress in Washington, D.C. more than twenty years ago, with, of all people, a game young Bradley Whitford in the title role, and despite this miscasting it worked.

It works again in a gripping new movie version, opening this weekend in the Valley, directed by and starring Ralph Fiennes. He retells the story in 21st-Century clothes and settings (much of it was filmed in Serbia and Montenegro), with Shakespeare’s text boiled down to its bones by screenwriter John Logan.

Although T.S. Eliot thought it was superior to Hamlet, Coriolanus is one of Shakespeare’s most brilliant but least-beloved works. It’s the story of a General in the early Roman Republic, Caius Martius, later given the title cognomen for his victory over the Volscians at the town of Corioli, and of how, for all his martial valor, he is ultimately destroyed by his open contempt for the uppity Plebeians—with a little unwitting help from his psychotically militant mother.

For his successes in war, Martius (Fiennes) is nominated for consul, but he can’t get past a formality he finds demeaning—a requisite custom of presenting himself to the common people and displaying his scars won in Rome’s service. An unapologetic Patrician snob, he loathes the commoners, if he thinks about them at all, and is indifferent to their opinion of him.

Cajoled by his mother Volumnia (Vanessa Redgrave) and the avuncular consul Menenius (Brian Cox) into the ritual scar-baring, he endures it with misery, only to have the Tribunes stir up an insurrection by convincing the Plebes that he was insincere. They aren’t wrong, either—confronted with this horde, he spews venom at them, and ends up banished for his trouble.

Now homeless, Martius seeks out his mortal enemy—who’s also his unmistakable and requited man-crush—the Volscian leader Tullus Aufidius (Gerard Butler), and spitefully offers to help him invade Rome. Aufidius gleefully agrees, and the stage is set for a final, catastrophic clash between native loyalty and lust for revenge.

Fiennes and Logan find very clever modern contexts for the verse, and Fiennes’ tense staging of the battle scenes could please any fan of Green Zone or The Hurt Locker. He also captures a wonderful performance from Cox, and one of Redgrave’s best turns in a long time.

Gerard Butler comes off well, too. His Aufidius, thick-bearded, friendly, slyly sexy, makes a startling contrast to Martius.

On top of all this, Fiennes also gives one of his own best screen performances. He’s a strong, commanding actor, and he had a certain sad charm in Quiz Show, but overall, likability isn’t his specialty. That’s not a problem here. He doesn’t need a common touch for his Martius, a portrait of a deeply unhappy man who can only make sense of life in the midst of chaotic violence, to be moving.

Unlikable though the title character is, maybe part of the reason that Coriolanus can be so alienating for modern audiences is that the Ayn-Rand-ian slight regard of Martius for the unwashed herd has its seductive side. From this and many other works, there can be little doubt that Shakespeare shared at least some of his protagonist’s disgust for the fickle and dangerous mob, though not to the same pathological degree, and you may find yourself guiltily stirred up by the sneering invective directed at them (partly because Shakespeare, unlike Ayn Rand, could write).

And finally, in this Primary season you may reflect that, compared to the shameless attempts to dupe us into serving the interests of the rich, the open disdain of Martius for the poor might be downright refreshing.

SOMETIMES BARD IS BAD

Your Humble Narrator missed the screening of Anonymous last October, & didn’t catch up with the film during its brief theatrical run. I wrote a column summarizing my thoughts about the premise it dramatizes—that the works attributed to Shakespeare were secretly written by Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, with Shakespeare as a front, & that this was covered up for various political & personal reasons.

Ludicrous as I think this idea to be, I was nonetheless very curious to see if Anonymous might be a fun movie on its own terms. Last week it came out on DVD & PPV, & I got my chance to find out.

The film, directed by Roland Emmerich from a script by John Orloff, is a really crazy Renaissance fever-dream. Though the class & academic snobberies from which I believe the Oxfordian “theory” arises are the tale’s unmistakable subtext, it’s hard for me to imagine even a staunch Oxfordian thinking much of the case it makes, since Emmerich & Orloff ignore history at every turn.

Rather than offering even a partial list of its nonsense, suffice to say that, even aside from any speculation about Shakespeare’s authorship, the film shows no more interest in historical accuracy about the Tudor period than, say, Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds showed toward the history of WWII. Taking such liberties is, of course, a perfectly acceptable convention in period drama—for the most obvious example, it was Shakespeare’s own method in his history plays. But it seems an odd approach for a movie that claims setting the historical record straight as its mission.

Aside from any issue of accuracy, the plot, built on the idea that Oxford & Elizabeth I were longtime lovers, is overlong & overcomplicated. But for all that, I quite enjoyed Anonymous. This shouldn’t be mistaken for a recommendation, except to other fanatical (& thick-skinned) Shakespeare geeks for whom even a curio like this has its appeal. It’s a pretty bad movie, I suppose, but it’s a well-made movie, with an absurdly distinguished cast.

Rhys Ifans, with his handsome high forehead & his troubled eyes, is effective as Oxford, wisely not trying to make him likable—the Earl is an imperious & bitter sort, but with a quick, observant mind. Vanessa Redgrave & Joely Richardson are both beguiling as different vintages of Elizabeth, Sebastian Armesto makes an improbably self-effacing Ben Jonson, & Mark Rylance actually gets to do a bit of classical stage acting as Henry Condell.

But these are only a few examples of the fine work done by the huge cast. The actors skulk around the loving recreation of late-Elizabethan London in doublets & tights, murmuring exposition at each other, & if you’re a sucker for this sort of thing, as I am, there’s a decent chance you’ll be amused. Also, laborious as the plot may be, its final twist, though silly & unsavory, is at least a juicy humdinger.

What I most enjoyed about Anonymous, however, was, oddly, its depiction of the “real” Shakespeare. Played rather likably by Rafe Spall, this version of ol’ Will is a Dickensian knave, not just a fraud but a drunken, whoring lout, a vain buffoon, a blackmailer, & even a thuggish cutthroat—it’s implied he murders Christopher Marlowe for threatening to reveal his secret (some six years after poor Marlowe had already died in a barfight).

I couldn’t help but find something perversely endearing in this very posthumous & ineffectual attempt at character assassination. I think it reveals the psychological heart of the Authorship Controversy: The envious resentment that we mediocrities may feel when confronted by an unassailably superior talent—especially a talent who had the nerve not to go to college.

The urge to paint Shakespeare as this movie does isn’t very different, perhaps, than the urge of an underachieving student to doodle obscenely on the face of the valedictorian in the yearbook. It’s outrageous, of course, but—especially at this historical distance—it’s too human to be truly offensive. Shakespeare can take it.