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Coriolanus

Coverage by Nobuhiro Hosoki

Story : Caius Martius ‘Coriolanus’ (Ralph Fiennes), a revered and feared Roman General is at odds with the city of Rome and his fellow citizens. Pushed by his controlling and ambitious mother Volumnia (Vanessa Redgrave) to seek the exalted and powerful position of Consul, he is loath to ingratiate himself with the masses whose votes he needs in order to secure the office. When the public refuses to support him, Coriolanus’s anger prompts a riot that culminates in his expulsion from Rome. The banished hero then allies himself with his sworn enemy Tullus Aufidius (Gerard Butler) to take his revenge on the city.

Opens January 20, 2012

| Runtime:2 hr. 2 min.

 

Interview with Director/Actor Ralph Fiennes

 

(Q) : What was the allure for you of directing this piece?

(Ralph Fiennes) : I played Coriolanus onstage and had a strong feeling that it could be a movie for lots of reasons. It's got a political-social background, which is always relevant. People are seeing it now and going, oh yes, just like the Arab Spring. But I think this crisis of authority is always with us. It has a reputation as a difficult play, I think, because some of its text is really tough. But I think as a story and a parable of political, social, civic dysfunction, and continual warfare [laughs], I think it could really speak.

Also, it has at its heart a mother-son essential confrontation, which is what has always really moved me about it. So it's got these epic possibilities: warfare, political upheaval, people on the streets -- which have a decent cinematic scale. But at the heart of it, there's this intimate, familial mother-son tragic thing happening. I thought we could edit it aggressively, and thanks to John Logan, we did it. I proposed this thing to him. He wrote this extremely dynamic screenplay which reflected exactly what I had anticipated, but he realized it with his brilliant adaptation. I felt the actor in me wanted to revisit the part on film.

There had been a voice inside me that's been wanting to direct for awhile, and no one else was banging on my door wanting to direct it. I knew it would appear insanely ambitious and a little stupid to [act in] such a big thing and also direct it, but I couldn't help it. I just felt it very strongly. As I lived with it as an idea, I became more convinced that I wanted to be directing it and that the world of it and how it should be cast and the nuances of it and the tone of it was what I was hearing and feeling. John Logan agreeing to write it was, in effect, to me, a validation of the idea. And he got excited about it. This is a man, as you know, who is working with the top A-list of directors and resources behind those directors. So for him to be genuinely excited by the proposal and then to write something that he genuinely cared about meant a lot. I was buoyed up by the energy of what he did. So then he said to me, "I think you should direct this." He was very up front in his support.

(Q) : You said you had this idea and you passed it off to John, and it sounded like he kind of went away and executed it. Was that during the shooting?

(Ralph Fiennes) : I considered John a partner in the whole writing and the development process. He wasn’t there when we were shooting it. We had agreed on what it would be, but dramatically, in terms of drama, the lines, what a scene was doing, where it was, should it be in, should it be out, the mood, the whole rhythm of it as a drama all of that, all those discussions, were very much based on an intense collaboration with him. They happened before. We met, we talked, we went through the text and agreed on essential cuts, and we agreed on settings, where this might take place, where that might take place.

Then he went away and wrote a brilliant first draft. And then, as we had to wait two years to find the finance, budgetarily, we were challenged. Initially, the television studio scene was set in a football stadium, and then very quickly that was clearly very hard to pull off. Even with all the tricks in the world, it was going to be budgetarily out. I came up with the idea of the TV studio, so the script changed through discussions.

At one point, we thought we had funding from somewhere, but it was saying they thought we could make it for this, we have to do it for this amount, so we started to cut and reduce. Then we got to a point when that funding fell through. It was kind of a relief, because I thought we had over-cut stuff. I had pressure on me to cut the scene with Vanessa losing it on the steps of the senate where she assaults the tribunes. Someone said to me, “Narratively, that scene is not essential. You could take it out.”

And in pain, I did because I could see always regretting it. Then when that sort of funding went away, I didn’t have that person leaning on me. I reinstated it. Actually I said “This is the script. I’m not fucking with it anymore.” I said “It’s a great scene,” and this person said “But it’s out of character,” which is crazy. It’s a fantastic scene. What is a character? You write they do this, it’s a surprise, but hey, they do it, so it must be in their character somewhere.

(Q) : Why did you choose an Eastern European location?

(Ralph Fiennes) : The location came about through some practical financial concerns. I wanted for it to have the scale that I just mentioned. You need streets, I wanted soldiers, I wanted a tank or two, and I wanted a parliament. So there it was, quite ambitious for something that at face value has no commercial appeal. It's Shakespeare. We don't know this one. And he's acting in it and directing. Then the character is Coriolanus -- he hates everyone.

We had to crunch the reality was our budget was very tight. So the question was where can we afford to do this, that has a film infrastructure we can rely on. Obviously, there are other countries around the world where things are very cheap, but you don't know who you're doing business with. I went to Romania, Bosnia, Serbia, Croatia, Montenegro. Bucharest was a candidate. But Belgrade clinched it, principally because we were told we could use their Senate chamber for next to nothing.

In order to build a real senate chamber -- we wouldn't have been able to do it, and as a piece of location casting, you need this. If you're going to do it on this scale, you need the senate chamber. You need the real deal. Because it's a national building, they don't charge. That was a huge factor. Then there were streets and marketplaces, and a production company in Belgrade who were fantastic. Their organizational expertise was brilliant. And alongside that was, "oh, it's Serbia and there's this history". So that feeds into the atmosphere.

But it was never my or John's intention to say this was the history of the Bosnian conflict, although those things fed in. Indeed, lots of photographs and imagery from the conflict were there as references in the design and the atmosphere of the film. It's meant to be a place, as it says in the front, "a place calling itself Rome." It's a place today. Because it is Eastern European, it'll have that flavor. But I'm hoping the audience go, "well, it could be Chechnya, it could be Afghanistan, it could be recent history in Latin America, or it could be even bits of Israeli-Palestine."

(Q) : Cameraman from "The Hurt Locker."

RF: The first time around, I knew I was going to be pushed for time. I knew there'd be tough shooting days when you wanted a cameraman that can get that stuff when it's happening and is quick and fast and is in there, and I knew Barry Ackroyd could do that. Crowd scenes, battle scenes -- Barry has the most brilliant, instinctive compositional eye. Even if he's in the middle of trying to get something, he's finding frames that are fantastic and he operates as well.

I had ideas about certain scenes, how they should be. Often I’d be saying “Help me here. What’s the best angle for this? I think it’s this, but I could be wrong. You offer it up.” Sometimes they weren't very good, and he'd say, "Maybe it's better if we do this." But I learned a lot on the way. The dialogue with Barry is an interchange of ideas.

I also felt with the more static scenes, there should be an innate simplicity in it. I wouldn't know how to do it. I see films where directors move cameras in elaborate ways when it seems those scenes are essentially static. I don't quite understand it. I'm learning. But there were scenes like my arriving in the Volskian bunker place, where I had the long hair and I break in. I wanted that to have very specific light sources and I looked at paintings by Caravaggio to see that very strong shadow and lights.

(Q) : It really flares up again in that last scene. What were you trying to accomplish with that?

(Ralph Fiennes) : Oh, I think there is this hinterland of unconscious attraction between these two men who profess initially to hate each other. But Coriolanus, in a very early scene, says “Were I anything but what I am, I would wish me only he. Were I not who I am, I would be Aufidius.” So woven alongside their rivalry and apparent hatred is a huge admiration, and they go hand in hand. And I think there is an unconscious attraction of two extreme warriors. I don’t think it’s a conscious homosexual attraction, but I think it’s so close to that locker room rivalry that you can’t help but see it’s there. And I think it’s definitely in the text.

Aufidius grieves Coriolanus and says “Let me twine mine arms about that body. Now that I see thee here, thou noble thing more dances my rapt heart than when I first my wedded mistress saw bestride my threshold.” He goes on and on like that. It’s misleading, because it’s full of romantic language.

But then Aufidius uses the fisting word -- but not meaning it in gay sex. “Down together in my sleep, unbuckling helms fisting each other’s throats.” That’s misleading, but he’s been dreaming about Coriolanus and fighting him and he’s obsessed with it. It’s unquestionably there. And then a sense of betrayal, the jealous lover’s betrayal, "you betrayed me," is so strong. But I wrestled with how to do the ending. At one point in an earlier version of the script, Coriolanus cut his own throat to deny Aufidius the death stroke. But I realized this is wrong. Aufidius has got to do it. I discussed with John that it’s a sort of ritual killing, which is why the guns are put down and it’s a knife killing. It’s like this is the death of a traitor -- he’s knifed. And then, yes, it’s meant to be deliberate, that it’s a sort of a cradling, an embrace, and a penetrative act of the knife going in.

(Q) : Did you work with the actors primarily or did you also work with the technical end of it as well?

(Ralph Fiennes) : Well, you have to work with both. I think the best experience I’ve had as an actor is that your ideas as an actor are welcomed by the director. Your instinct about where you should be in a room, or how you should move, or where you should get up, or how you should approach it emotionally -- your ideas are listened to. And then you listen to the director’s idea. Then the director’s job is to record it, I think, without getting in the way, especially if it’s a sensitive point or key point in the drama.

What comes to mind is the scene at the end with Vanessa. Vanessa is so extraordinary; you want only to help her and be there and not to get in the way -- but to offer up a physical, spatial possibility: there’s a man in a chair, you come in, this is what I’m suggesting happens, there’s a family thing. And then one of the great discoveries she made, which was thrilling, was the intimacy with which she starts that big speech and appeal, because its proposition as a scene is essentially formal.

A man in authority receives a family and says “What do you want? Tell me what you want.” I’ve always seen it as, he’s surrounded by his soldiers. And I said to Vanessa, “I think maybe you kneel, maybe five, six feet away.” She tried it and then said “You know what, I think I need to be closer.” And then I said “Yes, let’s try that.” And then this amazing thing happened where she just looked at me and just looked, and then spoke incredibly, intimately, and softly.

So that to me is, the director offers up something, the actor takes it and then says “No, I think it should be this,” and then makes a discovery, and the director goes “Fantastic. I just now need not to fuck this up, but shoot it. Make sure it’s in focus.”

(Q) : How challenging was it to direct yourself in those action scenes with Gerard Butler? He’s known as Mr. “300” Man.

(Ralph Fiennes) : I was working out every day just so I could not be moved.

(Q) : And did you feel you held your own?

(Ralph Fiennes) : I did. I held my own.

(Q) : But what was it like to be in those scenes with him? How would you describe that feeling?

(Ralph Fiennes) : Intense. It’s intense because whenever I’ve done any fight scenes with anyone, there’s always this adrenaline. You want it to be real and aggressive, and it’s raw -- there’s a raw energy in the room. The stunt guys are there trying to actually hold you back, because the more adrenalized you are, actually, there’s always a chance you don’t do it as cleanly. There’s a fine line between having the right rawness but executing the punch or the stab effectively and being so full of adrenaline you’re all over the place.

That was very, very intense. It was very hot and smoky. But that was a scene I felt had to have a strong plan. Having decided it was going to be modern dress with guns, obviously, they could meet each other and shoot each other and that’s the end of the story. But in the play, it’s swords and then he’s pulled away. So I needed to create a fight with blades that we could believe.

In the story, Shakespeare -- brilliantly, I think gives them a confrontation so we understand their extreme competition and hatred and their physical rivalry. It was funny, though, because in my head it was this smoky fucked up interior and then out of the mist the warriors emerge. Aufidius emerges with his gun pointing down. Coriolanus sees it and in an intuitive moment, they eyeball each other.

They know this is a moment of reckoning before they shoot each other. They have a little interchange, and then he pulls the blade as if to say “I will kill you with this,” and Coriolanus meets the challenge and the fight starts. And that was all quite planned. It was funny at the time because the Serbian officer who’s in charge of the authenticity of our military behavior -- who was all the time brilliant at saying “Yes, yes, very good, very professional. Not like this, very, very on the case, which of course, I loved. But we get to this point and he says “What do you want in this scene?” And I say “Well, they come around the corner but then Aufidius has his gun down and Coriolanus sees it and drops his gun.” He says “No, no, now you are making a movie.”

(Q) : Can you talk about the casting process? Did you have Vanessa or Gerard in mind?

(Ralph Fiennes) : I had Vanessa in mind right from the start.

(Q) : And Gerard?

(Ralph Fiennes) : Gerard pretty soon after that, yes. Lots of people threw in their opinions about all kinds of people who could play Aufidius. But I wanted to approach Gerard because he had this full-on-warrior, charismatic quality. I thought I would be turned down. But he had been a walk-on in a production of Coriolanus years back and has a sort of nostalgic affection for the play. I also thought that, having done a lot of rom-com things aside from 300, he might like to come and do a bit of Shakespeare.

(Q) : What about Jessica Chastain? This is a year in which she’s had at least four films come out.

(Ralph Fiennes) : I cast Jessica on a hunch and a bit of a clip from Salome. I was told I should see her, that she was extraordinary and luminous and had a sort of gravitas and transcendence. I knew she had done Tree of Life, which I hadn’t seen. I’d only seen a clip of Salome and I could tell she was a seriously good actress.

I met her over a cappuccino and thought everything about her energy felt right. I offered it to her on a gut instinct, which was confirmed when I saw her play Desdemona at the Peter Sellars production here in New York. She was the best Desdemona I’d ever seen. So at that point, I knew the instinct had been okay.

(Q) : What made you cast John Kani?

(Ralph Fiennes) : I wanted to have a black actor play Cominius, sort of based on a Colin Powell-Obama reference, and I wanted a multicultural political establishment. And I wanted, obviously, a great actor as well. It was important to me, shooting in Serbia, where the ethnic diversity is quite limited. So if you see the film, you’ll see I’ve tried in the background to put one or two black faces. I wanted a sense of this could be anywhere; it could be America, it could be England.

(Q) : Rome did have the black elements in labor.

(Ralph Fiennes) : Yeah. But I wanted these people to be in authority as well. So that was the thinking.

(Q) : Did any of the other cast surprise you or did you even surprise yourself, like maybe change from the performance you’ve given in the past?

(Ralph Fiennes) : Brian Cox came with wonderful ease of language, just occupied that part effortlessly. He just got it. He somehow had that wonderful sort of authority and a kind of weariness that goes with it. Gerard completely blew me away in the speech by the car with the murdered family. There’s a kind of raw emotion there which was thrilling, I thought. Did I surprise myself? I don’t know. I think I had a strong idea of where I wanted. I most remember having a continual anxiety that because I was directing myself, was I delivering it? And how could I tell if I was, anyway?

I think I always knew there was a rawness and a rage waiting to come out for the scene in the television studio. I hadn’t ever done it onstage, and I hadn’t ever done it with that intensity, maybe. I don’t know. I had a woman there, Joan Washington, who’s known and admired as a dialect coach in the UK. I brought her on to oversee the speaking of the text for everyone, but also as my own acting coach or person to give me honest critical feedback on my own performance. It was tough, because I very much depended on Joan.

I relied on her and my script supervisor. You’re really looking for a kind of truth: do I buy it, do I believe it, is it getting too theatrical, is it overdone or is it undercooked? The hard thing about Coriolanus because I tried lots of people will the audience want to follow this man who’s so confrontational and his contempt for the people is so overt? I feel they do, if they understand that he’s got his own weird integrity that he’s trying to honor.

I put in a scene which isn’t in the film where he sees a young solider dying in a triage area after the battle, and goes to the solider and looks in his eyes as he dies. John and I discussed it being there to show, "look, here’s a man who cares for his troops when they are giving their lives." It didn’t work. In the context of the character and how you pitch the character, it seemed slightly sentimental in a way that was not helpful.

In fact, any moment where I thought I had plotted the moment of a possible point of empathy seemed like a moment of weakness. I felt in the editing process, no, he is this thing that just doesn’t give you anything until the end. That’s why the end scene should work: nothing happens until the end, he breaks under his mother. I was learning all that. A lot of the time you’re making judgments based sheerly on intuition.

(Q) : One of the things that’s so powerful about the film is you use a lot of these military archetypes, political archetypes. When you were  imagining these scenes, did you have certain cinematic or literary references beyond Shakespeare in mind?

(Ralph Fiennes) : I feel I’ve been on the receiving end of endless images of parades of politicians in suits and glad-handing and podiums. My favorite newspaper is the Herald Tribune, and it always has a brilliant picture. The Harold Tribune's front page picture is always telling and photographically artistically strong.

I started to tear out newspaper photographs that mean something to me because I had this idea, often from the Herald Tribune. With the war imagery, with Iraq going on, the continual images of conflict, soldiers, dust, and demonstrations, where they were in Greece, and then there’s always the mad, loopy picture of Berlusconi or President Bush or the suits who are always glad-handing.

They fed into this sort of catalog of imagery, which is what I was experiencing just as a person, like all of us in the room. This is what we’re receiving, these are the key images we receive through the media, through television and newspapers. I was building up a picture of imagery for how I would create the world of the film. And it seemed to work.

(Q) : Were there any particular directors that gave you inspiration on an aesthetic approach?

(Ralph Fiennes) : An inspiration? Well, the directors who paid particular attention to the coherence of the world that they’re creating -- someone like David Cronenberg, or actually István Szabó, who did a film I did called Sunshine, and certainly Anthony Minghella. And Fernando Meirelles, too. They obsessed with the world, the detail of the world, the surfaces of things, the reflective surfaces of this table, the walls, everything is talked about. I found I like getting into that kind of detail.

These are directors [who have] a sort of truth -- they want to create a truthful, coherent world that isn’t decorated or somehow enhanced to show off. There’s a kind of grittiness, a rootedness. I remember with David Cronenberg, we shot this film based in London. But he was aiming for a very particular world which is this urban London, which doesn’t really exist, but there’s an atmosphere he was looking for.

There were no cars in it, I don’t think. I remember thinking he’s making very specific choices for this mood to happen. One of the films that was inspirational was the Pontecorvo film The Battle for Algiers. It says at the front [that] none of this is a documentary but you think it might be. And so that veracity was very important to try and emulate.

(Q) : Do you think it says something about Shakespeare’s continuing modernity that people are still spinning conspiracy theories about him?

(Ralph Fiennes) : About the authorship, you mean? I don’t know. I suppose so. I don’t get it, myself. It’s a kind of a cul-de-sac discussion, I find. I’m ignorant of the arguments as to why it wouldn’t be Shakespeare from Stratford-on-Avon, and I’ve not seen Anonymous. And I will see it because of Vanessa.

But I suppose the fact that a whole film could be made about it means that at least Shakespeare is still provoking us. I suppose if it can occupy that much time and attention, it means somehow he’s very present. The plays are provoking us to question the author. I don’t know.

(Q) : If you could ask Shakespeare anything about Coriolanus from a director’s point of view, what would you like to ask him?

(Ralph Fiennes) : Oh wow. I’d have a whole list. I would ask him is there anything in the play he would like to cut? It would be his choice to cut. Would he want to editorially revisit the play?

(Q): Now that you’ll be directing as well as acting in films, will there be time for stage work anymore?

(Ralph Fiennes) : Well I’ve just finished -- not here, sadly -- but I’ve just finished playing in London. I would love to come back here on the stage, yes. There are constant discussions happening from producers and writers here who are approaching me to do stage work in New York. I very much hope it will happen in the near future.

End.