Watch The Tragedy of Coriolanus For Free

Memorable, crazy movie

Just what I expected

Absolutely the worst movie.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

This performance of Coriolanus is a miraculous work of art.It is superb from beginning to end but 3 scenes stand out;Coriolanus' farewell to his wife and mother - Coriolanus' first meeting with Aufidius - The death of Coriolanus.In the death scene the Director has ignored Shakespeare's explicit stage directions and introduced some ambiguity. Is Coriolanus saying,"kill" to spur himself on or is he urging Aufidius to kill him? Leaving open the possibility that Coriolanus felt he deserved to die for giving in to pity is a brilliant touch and deepens the sense of tragedy. The cast is extremely impressive. They all had a clear comprehension of the meaning and significance of everything they did and said. They did not merely act but lived their parts.This performance moved me to tears. Shakespeare has never done that to me before. I wish Nietzsche could have seen this performance.Some critics say that The Tragedy of Coriolanus is not as good as Shakespeare's other tragedies because they do not understand Coriolanus' motivations due to the lack of soliloquies from him. I am sure Shakespeare understood that this play would appeal to only a few. Those few would not need soliloquies because they would know that Coriolanus was thinking what they think and suffering what they suffer.Coriolanus is Hamlet in another time and place. Coriolanus and Hamlet are the greatest plays ever written. I have never seen a truly great performance of Hamlet but at least I have now seen a truly great performance of Coriolanus.

"Coriolanus" is a good Shakespeare play, though lack the thematic and character precision of some his better tragedies, most notably "Macbeth" which was also about a soldier.Caius Marcius - later renamed Coriolanus - (Alan Howard) returns to Rome after a proud victory over the Volscian warrior and his nemesis Tullus Aufidius (Mike Gwylim). However his proud disdain for the people of Rome sees him quickly banished by the senators, setting the scene for his downfall that not even the appeals of sympathetic senator (Joss Ackland) or his mother (Irene Worth) can prevent.Howard is quite a presence as Coriolanus, bristling with arrogance and hatred. His performance, though, is a little too theatrical at times. Mike Gwylim is fine as Aufidius and Irene Worth is a fine matronly presence as Volumnia, his mother.It's technically very interesting to watch despite the typically clumsy stage fighting. Corioli and the home of the Volscis are crimson sets, appropriate for a defeated people drenched in blood and anger and the battles are framed well enough in darkly lit backgrounds of smoke and fire. Some scenes could have been trimmed for pacing.Another good entry, and a reasonable enough try at one of Shakespeare's more difficult plays.

Although the BBC Time-Life dramatization of Coriolanus is titled The Tragedy of Coriolanus, there is some opinion that considers the play a comedy, albeit a very dark satire of the consequences of a haughty patrician arrogance. Who is being satirized, of course, is open for discussion, but one suggestion is that the play skews the ill-fated Earl of Essex, a British commander who led a campaign in Ireland and whose overweening ego and hubris led him to the Tower and beheading at the age of 35 after the so-called Essex Rebellion of 1601. Not printed until the First Folio of 1623 and not performed publicly prior until much later, no evidence exists that would support orthodox claims for a date of composition of 1605 to 1608 and the date the play was written is unclear.Shakespeare's primary source for Coriolanus was Plutarch's The Lives of Noble Grecians and Romans, first translated into French by Bishop Jacques Amyot in 1559 and then into English by Thomas North in 1579 and popular enough to reach its third printing in 1603. This enormous work by the Greek philosopher and biographer, among several books purchased by the 19-year-old Edward de Vere in the original Amyot translation (receipts for this purchase still exist), was the principal source for several of Shakespeare's plays, including Antony and Cleopatra, Timon of Athens, and Julius Caesar.Though the author follows Plutarch's account of the life of Coriolanus, Shakespeare expands on the role of Coriolanus' mother Volumnia (Irene Worth), Coriolanus' (Alan Howard) inner turmoil, his wife Virgilia (Joanna McCallum) and on the character of Menenius (Joss Ackland) whose prominence in the play is not matched in Plutarch. The story revolves around a rather obscure Roman soldier from the 5th Century BC named Caius Marcius, whose winning battles against the Volsces, the enemies of Rome. His attack against the city of Corioli, defended by Volsces general Lucius Afidius (Mike Gwilym), leads him to be named Caius Marcius Coriolanus and a triumphant return to Rome. There he is nominated for consul, a term-limited position that requires confirmation by the Senate and by the people.It is soon apparent that recently elected Tribunes will oppose his nomination because of his opposition to plebian representation in the senate. As Coriolanus' disdain for the common people becomes painfully evident, his overbearing pride leads him to be declared a traitor and he is summarily banished from Rome. Returning to Antium, he joins forces with Aufidius, his former enemy, to lead a vengeful assault on Rome, where his wife, mother, and son still reside but, ironically in his most compassionate moment, he is brought down after an eloquent plea by his powerful mother to abandon the campaign.Though most everything about the authorship controversy is speculation, one is forced to wonder how a commoner could (in the totalitarian atmosphere of Elizabethan England) get away with writing a play in which the tragic downfall of an aristocrat is brought about by his disdain for the common people. Though it is true that Shakespeare makes the Plebians unruly and deceitful, he makes class distinctions the center of the story, a rather audacious act, and the disgraced soldier is eventually revered for his nobility.While the play is not on the level of Shakespeare's great tragedies such as Hamlet, Macbeth, and King Lear (there is no inner soul searching or comic relief), the performance by Alan Howard as Coriolanus captures the character's willful arrogance and the production is very well put together, one of the best BBC adaptations. One looks forward to the upcoming film of Coriolanus directed by Ralph Fiennes scheduled to begin shooting in March 2010.

Coriolanus is the most problematic of Shakespeare's tragedies.Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello and Lear keep us posted as to their internal states in extended soliloquies. However, Coriolanus is a proud soldier who loves his mother and is totally useless in any other context. What goes on inside his head is either shallow, wrong or just plain uncommunicative. As a result, it is much more difficult than usual to understand what is happening, and to evaluate our own response to it.Alan Howard brings his verbal precision and ready sneer to the difficult title part. No one's lip curls downwards more eagerly than his, but you may get confused as to how you feel about the progress of his downfall. Irene Worth works well with the camera in making her presence count as his mother, Volumnia.The rest of the cast boasts some real vocal splendor - Joss Ackland, Anthony Pedley, Valentine Dyall all rumble away magnificently, and the normally resonant Leon Lissek dries his voice out for contrast (unlike, say, his performance in "Shogun.") Mike Gwilym is perhaps a little too young for Coriolanus's arch-enemy Aufidias, but he acquits himself well enough. The homoerotic element of the Coriolanus-Aufidias relationship is fully justified by the text, but exactly how explicitly it should be shown is a subject for endless debate. It is worth pointing out, however, that the final chorus of "Kill! Kill! Kill!" is here reduced to a duet, with the crowd silent and only the two of them shouting in a kind of macho Liebestod.The real problem with this video is a word beginning with "C," but it's not Coriolanus, it's Caravaggio. Director Elijah Moshinsky's key to the whole production is Caravaggio's paintings, much as Vermeer is to his "All's Well That Ends Well." Unfortunately, the melodramatic ripeness of Caravaggio's lighting seem not to blend well with the conceptual austerity of most of the conflicts in the text. So two artistic experiences play out simultaneously in parallel, but according to more than one viewer, the twain never meet."Coriolanus" is, among other things, a play about class. Unfortunately, the costumes of the period chosen here do not always indicate instantly the class of the wearer, and in the prevailing gloom, wholly black costumes don't always register. We shouldn't have to decode these things - they should be obvious and unobtrusive.The editing is also a problem. Under the director's supervision, scenes often end abruptly and cut directly to the next, producing not the desired impression of speed, but irritation in the viewer. Sometimes we are staring at a reaction shot, when the reaction is not at all informative and we'd be better off watching the face of the speaker.Perhaps part of the cause is the compressed production schedule, but some editorial rhythms seem clumsy, and that's not characteristic of the BBC's house style - occasionally somnolent, perhaps, but never clumsy.In sum, the production is not bad, but does not make the case for bringing the play out of obscurity as Shakespeare's least honored tragedy. Mr. T. S. Eliot insisted that "Coriolanus" is a better play than "Hamlet." This video does nothing to force us to agree with him.