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Coriolanus

Joined
2/7/08
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The film Coriolanus should be out soon. It's based on Shakespeare's play of the same name, which was itself based on one of the lives in Plutarch. It looks interesting because I think they've kept the language Shakespearean (while transplanting the story to a modern setting). Film aficionados probably know Kurosawa did the same thing with Shakespeare's King Lear in his film Ran, transplanting it to medieval Japan.

 
This looks really freaking good

Yep, I'm waiting with bated breath. Discussing the character with a friend of mine, who wrote:

When a woman needs a man to check a noise downstairs, this is a memory of Coriolanus. When LA gang-bangers go into a burning building to rescue kids because the LAFD won't come, this is Coriolanus.

And a quote from TS Eliot:

I shall not want Honour in Heaven
For I shall meet Sir Philip Sidney
And have talk with Coriolanus
And other heroes of that kidney.
 
It looks interesting because I think they've kept the language Shakespearean (while transplanting the story to a modern setting).
I remember they did that with Romeo and Juliet. That was very interesting as it was the first time I saw Shakespeare done with professional actors, and it was much much better than plain reading it.
 
The play used to be one of the options in GCE 'A' level English Lit, in which connection I read it years ago. I was pointing out to my friend (cited in previous post) that "Coriolanus was an egomaniac , with no social skills whatsoever," to which he replied:

Yeah, well at least big man defended Rome against the Volscians. Plebeians sure wouldn't. All those bums cared about was filling their bellies. And they weren't the proles. They were new landowners without the discipline of the patricians, whose grandfathers had overthrown Tarquin when he raped Lucrece and created the Roman bigod Republic. The plebeians were the ones who ground down the common people but who didn't want to pay taxes or fight for Rome, and their descendants ultimately destroyed Rome...because "Rome" turned into me me me.

This is why Coriolanus is a tragedy. He was a good man who had the rug pulled out from him, for the "Rome" he defended was old Rome, with everyone pulling together, sons loyal to fathers, women honored and doing their duty. Brutus (not Shakespeare's Brutus, rather an ancestor) sacrificing his sons rather than betray Rome.

And before we condemn these people we need to spend time in a world lit only by fire and menaced by beasts and Volscians.

Of course one of the differences between the play and the movie adaptation is that Rome was a republic in the time of Coriolanus, whereas in the movie depiction -- assuming it's completely set in the contemporary world -- the US is very much "empire."
 
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