Coriolanus is not my favourite Shakespeare play, so I watched mostly because was I curious to see what Ralph Fiennes made of it. He first starred in the title role on stage, and went on to direct the film. It’s an excellent production – you can tell they’ve done it pretty shoe-string, but he’s assembled some terrific talent, most notably Vanessa Redgrave, who just walks away with her performance.
My biggest problem with the play is the character of Coriolanus himself. We’ve just come off a Star Wars bender with the kids, and the more I compared his character to Darth Vader the more I saw parallels between the two. Huh? you ask. Wait, stay with me here : Coriolanus is an excellent warrior, but is frustrated by, even has contempt for, the politics of the government he is charged to serve and population he is supposed to protect. The love he feels for his family saves him – just – from being irredeemable, but by that point it’s too late and he dies. It’s quite a bleak, pessimistic play, actually.
Speaking of benders, next there’s Michael Fassbender (SEGUE WIN) in Hunger. It was Steve McQueen’s directorial debut, and you can see why he won such accolades. It has a ‘free’, almost experimental, feel: long passages of silence, particularly at the beginning, punctuated by intense discussions, notably the famed 23 min dialogue scene between Fassbender and Liam Cunningham, 17 min of which a single unbroken shot. Amazing, harrowing, it’s an important movie.
I watched Midnight Cowboy first, some weeks ago, so my initial impressions have faded a bit. The two leads are amazing – Hoffman, in particular, has such a haunted look about him, down to his dark, dark eyes. It’s tough, but is ultimately a movie about friendship.
And The Misfits just made me sad as it is the last film both Marilyn Monroe and Clark Gable completed before they died, and Montgomery Clift followed them only a few years later. The story behind the movie is interesting – Arthur Miller wrote it for Monroe, to whom he was married, but their marriage was over by the time of shooting and she had begun her final descent into drug dependency.
Have you seen any of these movies?
To explain: The Year of Creative Engagement (#yoce) will be my attempt to document my creative journey, put greater stock in accountability and output, while also showing what new work I’m reading or listening to.
