Shakespeare isn’t Shakespeare without Shakespearean language. It might be difficult to understand exactly what the dialogue is during parts of Coriolanus, but there’s no difficulty following the meaning. The action, the direction and some powerful performances – most notably from Ralph Fiennes and Vanessa Redgrave – carry the film and more than compensate for the language barriers. Some people walked out about halfway through but the climactic third act made it well worth the perseverance - especially Redgrave’s moving monologue as the formidable matriarch Volumnia.
Gerard Butler was pretty forgettable in this. Whether that’s because he isn’t exactly of thespian discipline or because his character isn’t particularly pronounced in this play, is up to you to decide. Perhaps he and Jessica Chastain are nothing more than a bit of totty to sell the film? Perhaps that’s just a bit cynical.
James Nesbitt added an interesting, somewhat unexpected dynamic to the play with his enigmatic nuances of jest and malice. Also worth a mention was the little-known Dragan Micanovic who played a minor character, Titus, but delivered a couple of pivotal lines with engrossing presence.
The real star of the show is obviously Shakespeare. His poetic prose courses through your mind and adds fuel to the fires of his drama. His characters are bold and consistent, truly agents of their own destinies. The subject matter resonates with political allegory and the film’s release is timely and relevant. The play set in a present day context highlights the tribal social system which still dominates our affairs. The story also works to express the futility of war.
Fiennes has done well to translate Coriolanus from the stage to the screen and he hasn’t stretched it too far so as to alienate it from the original text. Stylistically, the film is quite gritty. The focus is mostly on the actors, their eyes, their expressions and their delivering of lines, but there are a few purely cinematic moments (fight scenes in particular) which justify the adaptation to the screen. There are a couple of truly violent moments in the film which blast the cobwebs off the old play and hook the modern, desensitized audience into the story.
Coriolanus is a tense and violent political wartime thriller which makes Shakespeare not only accessible but utterly captivating. A credible directorial debut from one of the industry’s finest working actors.
The Tree of Life starts something like a fragmented family drama. It soon moves onto an incredible sequence which is almost like an abstract portrayal of the history of the universe, narrowing down to a history of the Earth. Malick takes all the many patterns of life and existence– from microbiotic organisms to interstellar structures – and creates the most majestic collage. (I couldn’t help being reminded of that sequence at the end of Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey.)
The film evolves to focus on the story of Jack, son of a God-fearing American couple. It follows his journey from birth through childhood as he grows to makes sense of the world and struggles with his complicated adolescent emotions. The main plot follows Jack and his family, but the film remains universally relatable as it encompasses truly vast themes: life, death, love, hate, childhood, adulthood, parenthood, god, religion, nature, man, gender, sexuality, guilt, fear, shame, happiness, forgiveness, sacrifice…the list goes on.
Nearer the end it becomes highly symbolic, most notably repeating representations of doorways, passageways, bridges, circles, planets, suns, stars, waves, water, trees, hands, the sky and other loaded imagery which will inspire a complex of interpretations.
Ultimately, The Tree of Life is wholly philosophical and its messages are prophetic, discursive and intuitive. The juxtaposition of the greatest and smallest pieces of the universe gives the human drama a context that is humbling to say the least. Malick incredibly manages to underline the relative insignificance of man, whilst presenting an emotive human story. Malick has created an avant-garde masterpiece with mainstream appeal.
Michael Shannon, who I know most prominently from HBO’s tremendous drama series Boardwalk Empire, provides a fascinating portrayal of the main character, Curtis. An experienced actor, Shannon normally fills supporting roles, however Take Shelter proves he can provide a captivating lead performance at feature length too. Shannon is particularly suited to antagonistic characters so his place as the thwarted hero in Take Shelter makes an interesting addition to his profile. I suspect, however, there’s a likelihood he’ll be forever typecast as the villain following his performance as General Zod in the upcoming Superman film Man of Steel.
Curtis is a simple and honest man, living and working in a small Midwestern town with his beautiful wife (Jessica Chastain) and deaf daughter. Curtis embodies the characteristics of the all-American man: pride, confidence, rationality and the alpha-male, breadwinning instinct to protect his family and their happiness. Shannon effectively portrays this character, who could almost be clichéd were it not for Shannon’s ability to subtly develop him into something more complex as his mental stability deteriorates throughout the film. Curtis is never over-acted by Shannon and remains engrossing and delightfully plausible for the most part. However, there is one badly written scene at the end of the second act which seemed like needless dramatic sensation and didn’t suit the character at all. Not really Shannon’s fault and, in fact, he and Chastain did well on a couple of occasions to try to understate any particularly overtly dramatic moments in the script – most notably the closing scene, of which more later.
Jessica Chastain provides a dynamic performance as Curtis’ wife, Samantha, a loving, compassionate and god-fearing homemaker. As with Curtis, she starts the film as a character who is almost too idealistic and is also somewhat marginalized. As the plot thickens, though, her emotional depth is revealed and she becomes engaging and surprising. This character is particularly attractive in that she demonstrates an uncompromising loyalty to her husband in the face of an adversity that was instigated by her husband. In an age when the definition of the word marriage is, frankly, anyone’s guess, Samantha’s persevering trust is an undeniably charming characteristic and makes a refreshing change to a majority of the heroines of modern cinema.
Despite the fact that the film won the Critics Week Grand Prize at Cannes, among other awards and rightfully received acclaim, I think there are a number of criticisms to be made. The film is dry at times, in my opinion, probably because it suffers from a kind of auteur syndrome. It was both written and directed by Jeff Nichols alone and so is necessarily restricted to his creative vision. As a result of this, the film can occasionally feel hollow. Any character outwith the main three are shallow and one-dimensional. It’s apparent that all minor characters are written to fill a specific narrative purpose, rather than exist as part of an organic story. Whenever any of the minor characters are given any kind of idiosyncrasies, it comes across as decoration to their character and is painfully contrived. There are a number of unexplained ambiguities, too, for example the fact that Curtis’ daughter apparently has the ability to sense the storm that plagues Curtis’ existence. It isn’t just the characters that lack an extra dimension, but the story too: there is a distinct lack of subtext and subplot, giving the film a stifled air of artifice.
Nichols has perhaps over-simplified minor characters and plot lines for a purpose though. One of the film’s most redeeming features is that it travels between genres, fluidly and enjoyably. The film is quite a straight character drama, in the first instance, but progresses into borrowing heavily from psychological thriller and, more interestingly, apocalyptic horror. There are hints of zombies, supernatural disturbance and divine retribution, but you are never sure if they are instances of Curtis’ own personal psychosis, or if they represent something more real and impending. This aspect of the film is gripping and you never suspect when Nichols switches the flick from sober drama to paranormal thriller. For this overall design and the merging of genres to work, Nichols has minimized plot and character complexity - perhaps sacrificed them.
Clearly expert in exploiting the conventions of various genres, it seems Nichols has merely borrowed the quiet style of arthouse character drama only to provide a stark and terrifying contrast to his unexpected moments of horror. I don’t object to mixing genres, unless it’s to purely facilitate momentary sensationalism or to pull a veil of plausibility over viewers’ eyes to then present them with a ridiculously far-fetched conclusion.
The ending gives the entire film a new meaning, but at the expense of inflicting serious detriment to plausibility, suspension of disbelief and, subsequently, appreciation of the whole film. As enjoyable as the performances are, the blending of genres and the technical elements of the film, Nichols writes quite thinly and has a tendency for sensationalism that is somewhat contradictory to the films otherwise naturalistic feel. Jeff Nichols can write a film as a whole, but it seems he needs to work on making his minor characters more real and his stories more multidimensional. Either that, or fully realise his desire for sensationalism and step away from the more delicate realm of arthouse-esque character drama.
