Ralph Fiennes under fire

HI.

Undoubtedly there is an almost sick attraction that inevitably connects the great actors of the scene and British cinematographic art with William Shakespeare. Many of the performers of British origin who have established a chair in the art of acting and who over the years end up falling into the temptation of taking the step to stage or film direction have succumbed to Shakespeare's poison, from Laurence Olivier , John Gielgud or the most recent case of Kenneth Branagh. For a Briton, Shakespeare is like the blood that gallops through the veins without whose circulation life would have no meaning, and the fact is that the playwright of the golden age of English letters undoubtedly represents the milk emanating from the British scenic schools that feeds the yearning for success and lasting legend that the greatest actors of the islands yearn for. This paradigm has been followed step by step by the great Ralph Fiennes, without a doubt one of the greatest and most hypnotic contemporary British actors, who decided to debut as a film director in 2011 with a risky and strange adaptation of one of the tragedies most unknown and gigantic of the genius of Anglo-Saxon letters: Coriolanus.

Shakespeare's Coriolanus forms part of the nucleus of works written by the genius with a Roman atmosphere, perhaps the most emblematic of them being Julius Caesar (a work that Joseph L. Mankiewicz adapted for the cinema in his remembered theatrical film of the same name starring Marlon Brando) . It narrates the adventures of an army general named Gaius Marcio, baptized with the name of Coriolanus after conquering the city of Corioles, defeating his archenemy Aufidius in a bloody battle — general of the Volscian army, the main enemy that threatened the stability of the Roman Empire. —, who after his triumphant arrival in Rome will be proposed by the senate as consul by virtue of his war exploits. However, the machinations of two tribunes opposed to the appointment of Marcius as consul (Sicinius and Brutus) since they fear that his onerous power may be diminished after the rise of the unbreakable and incorruptible general, will make the previously entertained by the Coriolan people fall into disgrace. , using for it a whole series of lies and fallacies that will put the angry and manipulable people against their previously acclaimed hero. In this way, Coriolanus will be banished from Rome by the plebs, a reason that will inflame Coriolanus's hatred and thirst for revenge against Rome since he will not understand the reason that led to his exile and misfortune. Thus the general will ally himself with his old enemy Audifio to assault and destroy Rome at the command of the Volscian army. Despite his hatred, the pleas of Coriolanus' mother and wife, as well as those of his only friend Menenius, will make the former Roman general reconsider at the last moment, thus having to choose between following the paths of hatred and revenge or against accept the ways of patriotism and peace.

Well, this complicated plot gear full of symbolism and poetry buried at the bottom of its seed, in which there is room for incisive metaphors to emanate about the pettiness of politicians who sit back in power, who see a danger to its «status quo» with the arrival of populist leaders who alter the bloodstream of the populace whose blood they absorb with taxes and decisions that embrace their own benefit instead of the collective, a mob that in turn is easily manipulated by acclaiming the politics of the fear or merely with nationalist doctrines (we are going something of the raging topicality in our days), was reinterpreted by Fiennes temporarily placing the development of history in a current and contemporary world in which certain contemporary lines with the day to day to which it is easily glimpsed. we face each other: the manipulative images on television, the senators facing each other for stupid and incidental causes far removed from the problems s real, the warlike atmosphere and the crises of fear that structure and give reason for being to contemporary societies or the family and fraternal betrayals that are still as valid today as they were in the time that Shakespeare knew.