London Film Fest 2011 Day 15 - ANONYMOUS

The use of the interrogative tense in the poster for ANONYMOUS is misleading. Director Roland Emmerich and writer John Orloff aren't asking whether Shakespeare was a fraud. They are telling us, without doubt, with complete certainty, that he was. Their theory is that it is inconceivable that a poorly educated provincial dolt could have written plays of such genius and erudition. Rather, they posit that the Earl of Oxford, Edward de Vere, a man of great wealth and learning, wrote the plays. But at a time when theatres were next to brothels, and plays seen as seditious, it would have been degrading for Oxford to be publicly acknowledged as an author.  He therefore allowed the boorish, illiterate actor, Will Shakespeare, to take the credit, and the cash, with Ben Jonson as the unwilling go-between.  If this weren't scandalous enough, the movie further raises the stakes by positing that Oxford was at the centre of a conspiracy by his enemy, the puritan Cecil family, that involved the line of succession, incest and bastards. 

Taken on its own terms, ANONYMOUS is a great success. Indeed, I was quite amazed that Roland Emmerich - director of such dubious, mainstream disaster movies as 2012; 10,000 BC; and THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW - could direct something with such elegance and beauty. Because, make no mistake, ANONYMOUS is a brilliantly directed film. The way in which Emmerich deftly handles the transitions between different periods in Oxford's life is elegant and never confuses.  The conspiracy is woven with great delicacy so that even in the final act, we are genuinely surprised and saddened by the turn of events.  In front of the camera, Emmerich coaxes a career best performance from Rhys Ifans as the older Oxford, and uses CGI to create a completely engrossing and compelling Tudor London.  I was absolutely delighted to see Southwark and the Tower recreated, complete with squalor and grandeur.  Kudos to cinematographer Anna Foerster, shooting with the Arri Alexa (the first feature to do so).  She manages to create a colour palette of warmth and depth, beautifully capturing candelit pageants, and snow-covered country mansions. Most importantly, I cared. I deeply cared about the battle between Oxford and the Cecils - I cared about the fate of young Essex, the Queen's bastard son and pretender to the throne - and I cared about the Queen herself, wonderfully portrayed by Vanessa Redgrave as frail and vulnerable and hounded on all sides. 

Of course, when I stand back from the film, the whole thing seems a bit pointless. I've always thought that these debates - who wrote Shakespeare; was Shakespeare a crypto-Catholic; was the Dark Lady really a boy - pretty pointless, as there simply isn't the documentary evidence to decide it either way. So you're just left with dogmatic people using thin supposition.  In particular, the idea that Shakespeare couldn't have written the plays because they required great education strikes me as peculiarly class-ist. Just because someone is provincial and working class doesn't mean they aren't capable of genius - I mean, isn't the whole point of genius that it's like a lightning bolt. And anyway, according to Rene Weis' superb book "Shakespeare Revealed", Shakespeare attended a local grammar school and was taught by a string of Oxbridge graduates in all the subjects and to the very same standard that the movie suggests Oxford was tutored in and to....

But as I said, there's no point quibbling about the truth. I am perfectly happy to believe Will Shakespeare was indeed Shakespeare.  That didn't stop me having a cracking good time watching ANONYMOUS.  To that end, this movie falls firmly in the same category as SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE - a pleasing fiction.

ANONYMOUS played Toronto and London 2011. It is currently on release in Portugal, Finland and Norway. It opens on October 28th in Canada, Ireland, the UK and the USA. It opens on November 3rd in Germany; in Spain on November 11th; in France, Russia and Singapore on November 17th; in the Netherlands, Mexico and India on December 1st; in Sweden on December 16th; in Hong Kong and Hungary on February 2nd.

London Film Fest 2011 Day 6 - CORIOLANUS

A simple theory: all revolutions begin for the want of food. The sansculottes wanted bread; the Arab Spring began when a man protested the price of rice; and if you ask the Chinese Politburo, they do not think Tienanmen Square was about wanting freedom but about protesting high food inflation.  The people must eat, and become agitated when they cannot. They come out onto the street when they believe that society is so riven between the ruling class and the people that they have no democratic expression of their discontent.  It is a watered down and rather pathetic shadow-play of these concerns that sees protesters camped outside St Paul's Cathedral in London this week.  I say all this to show the absolute relevance and importance of Shakespeare's tragedy CORIOLANUS as brought to the screen by Ralph Fiennes with a screenplay adapted by John Logan (RANGO, THE AVIATOR).

If that sounds defensive, it's because Coriolanus has typically been seen as a "second-tier" tragedy, ranking behind Macbeth, Hamlet and Lear for complexity and beauty.  Typically, critics argue that it isn't truly great in form because it contains so little poetry, so few soliloquys, so little examination of Coriolanus' interior life.  There is some truth to this - Coriolanus doesn't spend hours examining his conscience and motives in the way that Hamlet does - but that's completely right for the character. Because Coriolanus is a great Roman general, not a student of philosophy. And more than any other Shakespearean military man, he is a man of action.  We see him fight his battles in detail and on stage - each attack and counter-attack - this is what defines him.  And because of this, the short, inter-cut battle scenes in Act 1, the lack of standing and "speechifying", Coriolanus is particularly suited to a film adaptation. The medium suits the man.  In particular, DP Barry Ackroyd's (THE HURT LOCKER) gritty, hand-held camera-work showing Coriolanus in battle in war-torn Belgrade is not merely a contrivance - an attempt by Ralph Fiennes to contemporarise the play - but is absolutely what the play is about.  Coriolanus doesn't soliloquise because he has no self-doubt at all. He knows what he is - a great military leader - and he believes that this is enough to become political leader of Rome.  The problem is, Rome itself has changed.

The City of Rome of the play has only just rejected its King and become a Republic - events that Coriolanus had a hand in. It is a weak and fragile state, split between the ancient ruling patrician families and the mass of common people. As the play opens, the patricians have conceded that the people should have two tribunes to voice their concerns, and it is these men, whose profile depends on antagonism between the patricians and the plebs, who will motivate much of the action.  The meat of the play is how Coriolanus will transition from decorated military leader to politician in this new world where merely asserting one's right to rule is not enough - where one must actively court the masses.  He is proud to be a military hero - pride is his great tragic weakness - but resents the fact that he can only be a hero by the acclamation of the common people. After all, he has been raised to believe that the virtuous life of a Roman consists of noble and heroic service to his City and that virtue, as in the Greek model, can only be possessed by a few.  In other words, Coriolanus is not a democrat, and refuses to even pretend to play the democratic game.*  He resents having to be acclaimed by the people and merely tolerates acclamation by his peers.  He sees his enemy Aufidius as his true peer - and in moments of greatest hubris, sees himself as a god, and thus without peers. After all, the gods rule not by courting the people but because they are just better, greater, more powerful.

This sets up the central conflict in the play. Coriolanus returns to Rome a hero, and while the common people know that he holds them in contempt, they cannot help but acclaim him leader. However, the new Tribunes stir up the people, exposing Coriolanus' veiled insults, and he can't help but raise to the bait, vilifying them and rejecting them. He takes the ultimate step of abandoning his City - a step which Allan Bloom describes as follows:  "What is the good of serving that which is not noble and will not permit him to remain noble?"  Coriolanus' tragedy is that he seeks honour, but honour conferred by the people, who are unworthy judges, is tainted. The logical next step is then for Coriolanus to punish Rome by returning with Aufidius, his once-hated enemy, as a military invader. And in this final part of the play and film he casts himself as a god - the logical solution to his problem of tainted acclamation.  Logical, yes, but unsustainable, because Coriolanus cannot, in the final analysis, be as cold and merciless as a god. When his mother - the wonderfully written Volumnia - appeals to him to make peace, he cannot resist.   In his pity, Coriolanus betrays Aufidius and is punished for it, though in the play (but not the film) he is acclaimed at the end. 

As I have described it, the play is a purely political animal. There are no tragic romances, personal betrayals, ghosts, witches or madmen that enliven and popularise the other tragedies. It is a play that is pure in its concerns, and because it deals with such a cold man, can appear cold and austere to its readers.  Because Ralph Fiennes and John Logan's adaptation is absolutely faithful to the text, I suspect that may well be the reaction to the film as well - all very well-acted and intelligently produced but somehow failing to catch a spark in the audience.  After all, with the exception of Brian Cox' voluble, charismatic Menenius, there aren't any characters that ooze human warmth.  The majority of players are cool political operators and agitators.  There is no romance - when Coriolanus (Ralph Fiennes) leaves Rome, we (and he) barely care that he has left his wife Virgilia (Jessica Chastain).  The strongest relationship is between Coriolanus and his mother (Vanessa Redgrave) - an austere woman who sees her role as a mother as one of "duty" not to her son but to her City - to raise an honourable man.  I love that Fiennes puts her in a masculine uniform for much of the play, subverting the expression of her maternal pride into something harder, tougher.  Accordingly, it is far more powerful when she capitulates and goes down on her knees, begging Coriolanus to make peace. 

So yes, one must admit, this is not a movie for those looking for human warmth, humour, frailty and subtlety.  But it is a film that brilliantly brings Coriolanus to a modern setting, and completely understands its subject matter, deftly condensing it to a two-hour run-time. The battle scenes are effective and take us to the heart of Coriolanus' character, and the set-piece confrontations - particularly between Fiennes and Redgrave - are spectacular. Indeed, in a uniformly superb cast, it is Redgrave that stands out. Most importantly, I truly believe that an audience coming to the movie with no prior knowledge of the play, would follow the actions and motivations of the characters, and respond to the tricks of having, for instance, real TV newscaster Jon Snow, playing a newscaster in the film.  More than that, I love how the movie manages to achieve all this while keeping all the iconic lines of dialogue, and goes further, adding layers of visual detail that enrich the viewing experience for those who know and love the play.  For example, Coriolanus' dragon tattoo recalls Menenius' line "This Martius is grown from man to dragon: he has wings; he's more than a creeping thing."  This seems to me the ultimate success of the film. A great play doesn't necessarily make a great film. One has to use the virtues of the medium - ultimately a visual medium - to enhance the brilliance of the text.  And Ralph Fiennes has done this to brilliant effect.

CORIOLANUS played Berlin, Toronto and London 2011. It opened in Serbia in February. It opens in Russia on December 1st, in the US on January 13th and in the UK on January 20th.

*Indeed, one could argue further that Shakespeare is also not a democrat. The criticisms of popular politics that he gives Martius are entirely reasonable and, indeed, prescient.  He predicts the rise of popular politicians like Julius Caesar, who in sharp contrast to Coriolanus conquered Rome because he corrupted the people. 

London Film Fest 2010 Day 8 - MIRAL

Julian Schnabel's latest feature, MIRAL, is a deeply frustrating movie. There's a brilliantly tense ticking bomb scene intercut with Roman Polanski's REPULSION; Schnabel's trademark fluid handling of the camera; and somewhere underneath the soap-opera-bad romance there's a genuinely fascinating drama. But man, does it get swallowed up by the hammy dialogue and piss-poor acting that surrounds it.

The movie is set in post-WW2 Jerusalem. Hiam Abbas plays Hind Husseini - the real life educator who sacrificed her personal life and wealth to run an orphanage/school for Palestinian refugees. Her struggle to keep her orphanage is lightly sketched in with a few comments and a rather redundant cameo from Willem Dafoe. Her story is the movie I would have wanted to see. What in her childhood gave her the fortitude and integrity to sacrifice her life? How did she navigate the slippery local politics and raise the money necessary? How did she really feel about never marrying?

The problem is that her story is down-played in favour of the story of Miral - one of her pupils. Miral is the daughter of a deeply emotional disturbed mother (Yasmine Al Massri in a very strong cameo performance) and a sympathetic but floundering father (Alexander Siddig). He places Miral in the school, trying to protect her from radical politics and danger. But as Miral becomes a teenager, she gets radicalised by seeing a village bull-dozed. This could have set us up for a fascinating drama playing off emotions against intelligence - and the very real and important choice between overt action and the longer game. But Rula Jebreal's script (she is the real-life Miral) keeps giving us glimpses of something interesting - say Miral's friendship with a Jewish girl - but refuses to explore it, reverting back to soap opera dialogue and emotional.

So, what do we have in the end? A movie that is a joy to behold, thanks to Schnabel's fluid camera and talent for capturing light - a movie that is earnest in its intentions - but ultimately one that is marred by the fact that it has cast an Indian girl who can't act in the central role, and its incredibly poor script.

MIRAL played Venice and Toronto 2010. It opens in Germany on November 18th and in the UK on December 3rd. It opens in the USA on March 25th.