Joe Glenton reviews Ralph Fiennes’ Coriolanus, with sharp lessons for mass movements, leadership and the fight for revolution over reform.

I have found some recent modernisations of Shakespeare too pretty, especially Baz Luhrman’s spirit-fingered expedition into the dark heart of kissiness. I understand the period in which Shakespeare wrote as one of mud, grit, social upheaval and the occasional gore-tinged ruff; this is what I want to see. In Fiennes’ directorial debut there isn’t a sequin, teen-pout or flop-haired, angel-winged, hot-panted man-child anywhere in sight. Coriolanus is about colliding forces, and has sharp lessons.

Fiennes’ rigid, cadaverous Martius is a noble bred to soldier – a scrapper’s scrapper, merciless with his men, his enemies and himself. At the outset, Rome nears revolt and revolutionaries plot and then on the city’s full granaries to protest at their enforced hunger. Brian Cox’s Patrician attempts to calm the crowds, but then Martius wades in to threaten them, clad strikingly in the grey US digital camouflage familiar from Afghanistan and Iraq footage. Here we discover a fierce and unsubtle man. The protesters withdraw after gaining a few concessions, but even these disgust the authoritarian Martius. Fortunately for Rome, the rival Volscians offer some external strife to distract the hungry masses, reducing them from dissent to patriotism.

The Romans and the Volscis clash in Corioles, the Volscian capital. The complex terrain of the shattered city recalls at once 1990s Sarajevo and post-2003 Baghdad. Separated from his men, Martius stalks the city, emptying his weapons into all-comers until – streaked with blood – he finds and rallies his troops towards a knife-fight with Gerard Butler’s brawny Aufidius. Their individual contest is indecisive, but the Volscis suffer a rout and the city is won. Martius collects the title Coriolanus and returns to Rome a hero with new scars and plaudits. Martius may be a victorious general, but he is now being steered towards political office, and it is in this political arena that his limitations are revealed.

Martius appears an oaf away from war. His nous in battle does not translate to politics and he is caught between his despising of the common folk and his contempt for his scheming peers. He refuses to take part in the civic rituals, which involve bearing his scars to the new tribunes, appointed to mitigate the earlier spirit of revolt.

His disgust at the people boils over into a series of memorable rants. These are rightly perceived as slights against them, and this feeling is manipulated by senators who point to Martius’ record of tyranny during the unrest. His sinister and influential mother – who leaves us with the impression she is queen and country embodied – fails to steer him from this course and he is exiled. He wanders far from Rome as a stateless outcast.

Desperate for revenge, he falls in with the Volscis. Aufidius welcomes him for his abilities, despite his own concerns and they pillage their way towards Rome until, at its gates, Martius’ mother entreats her son to make peace. Martius’ hate fizzles out. Aufidius, betrayed, grudgingly accepts the peace and later kills Martius.

The film is hauntingly shot in Serbia. Fiennes acquits himself well as a director and is superb as the title character – complex, fascistic, arrogant and terminally ill-suited to political sleight-of-hand. Yet his disgust at the hypocrisy of scheming, playing to the mob he memorably terms ‘fragments’ and participation in the silly symbolic games is resonant.

The ‘mob’, sadly, are a fairly peripheral bunch. They accept some piffling hand-outs in the form of their own representatives – the tribunes – and demonstrate that accepting reform is a step not an endgame. The leaders of the common people display a good turn of phrase – well, it’s Shakespeare – but lack tenacity. They naively believe that the senators are well-intended.

This is excellent, seek it out.