Ralph Fiennes Directs Shakespeare at War

Ralph Fiennes has more than earned his reputation as a serious film actor.  He gave outstanding critically acclaimed performances in films like “Schindler’s List”, “Quiz Show”, “The Constant Gardener”, “Clash of the Titans”, more.  He recently stopped in the SiriusXM studios to talk to Ron Bennington about his directorial debut– “Coriolanus”.  Not only did he direct the film, he also stars in it.  Below are excerpts from the interview.  

[Editors Note:  We’re calling “Coriolanus” our favorite movie of the year, watch for it in this week’s Filtered Excellence]

Ron Bennington:  Congratulations on the film and watching it, I thought something really extraordinary happens to the viewer.  After a couple of moments of settling into this, suddenly you’re understanding it. And I thought that was one of the most amazing things to happen because I think with Shakespeare we push back a little bit.

Ralph Fiennes:  I think there is the chance that Shakespeare’s language– people feel they’re alienated by it.  But I’ve always been moved and excited and thrilled by it.  And the best performances that I’ve seen have been where the speaking of the text is quite conversational and natural and that was one of the things that I wanted to achieve with this.  And for film to, I think film would resist any kind of histrionic delivery which might be thrilling in the theater.  So the people are sitting at cafe tables, smoking cigarettes, having cups of coffee  getting into cars, speaking on their cell phones— conversational.  The idea is, it’s the language they speak.  They speak it with all the natural energy we’re talking with right now.

Ron Bennington:  Now visually, did you direct differently because you knew people might be missing a line or a phrase somewhere?  Because I was picking up on feelings even where I would miss words.

Ralph Fiennes:  No, I think what’s inside people is really important. One of the things that I found myself doing was coming in really close on people.  Because I think  that the ear, understanding, is helped by us seeing what’s going on in the eyes and the face.   I think that the face is like a landscape. And it carries so much. Even while people are not speaking– like your face now listening to me is full of stuff  which on closeup would be really compelling.

Ron Bennington:  And yet we kind of disregard that in a lot of films.  We pick up on it when we watch The Artist because we’re focusing on faces.  And I believe in your film we’re doing that as well, just as viewers.

Ralph Fiennes:  Yes, I wanted not just the faces of the principal players, but also the crowd.  I punch in at times on the faces of the soldiers or people in the crowd because every face has a history.  The crowd is an important element in Coriolanus.

Ron Bennington:  It’s kind of a frustrating thing when we look back on Shakespeare to see that we haven’t changed that much.  That this story is so embarrassingly true.  But the crowd being us, in a lot of ways….

Ralph Fiennes:  …yes…

Ron Bennington:  …and showing how ridiculously fickle we can be about anything.  We act like– well if the people only knew the truth– and the people are noble but the politicians are corrupt.  But the people themselves can be corrupt.

Ralph Fiennes: People change their minds. We all do it. Who do we vote for?  Who do we support?  One of the things I wanted to attempt to show  was that within any crowd there are a number of different opinions.  So initially Coriolanus walks into the marketplace, shakes people’s hands.  He’s essentially canvassing votes.  He doesn’t want to do it.  He encounters different responses to him. Finally when he delivers his sort of speech, there is silence.  And then one guy who is an old vet says something like vote for him, he’s great.  And then a few young guys cheer and then it causes a ripple effect and gradually it builds and then they cheer him.  And then the opposition politicians work the crowd and turn them around but even in that moment you see other people listening, because not everyone in the crowd thinks the same thing at the same time.

Ron Bennington: And there was a big part of his pride in this, that reminded me of an athlete, or the way we treat athletes today.  Where we force them, after the game to go out and explain themselves.  But we only want it done in the same exact manner. I mean we really don’t want our star athletes to speak their minds.

Ralph Fiennes: I think this lies at the heart of Coriolanis.  The public figure, whether it’s an athlete or in this case, a soldier.  Coriolanus is determined to speak his mind. He doesn’t care if the people know that he dislikes them.  But people try to maneuver him into a position where he puts on this public face that you’re talking about, and that’s the heart of the drama. Initially he’s content to solovert the audience, and we think, well I don’t like this guy.  And then we understand that he’s an extraordinary soldier. And then, I think, audiences sense of allegiance to him changes.  They start to see that actually, he is what he is, and people try to maneuver him in way that’s contrary to his nature.  And I think then it’s possible to have a weird sympathy for him.

Ron Bennington:  You make sure you show technology and we’re seeing 24 hour news stations, people are video taping with their phones and all,  but it is still the same story.  And of course the mother in the film…

Ralph Fiennes:  Yes, Vanessa Redgrave…

Ron Bennington:  …who is outstanding of course but she has such a masculine feeling that there’s almost like a mother-father figure.

Ralph Fiennes: That’s absolutely right.  It’s interesting that Shakespeare never mentions who the father of Coriolanus is. He just presents us, the audience, with this extraordinary mother figure, who is so strong.  In the end, we learn, stronger than him.  And what’s always moved me about the play, when I first saw it many years ago with Ian McKellan playing Coriolanus, was the mother son confrontation which ends it. This is where a man of war essentially implodes at his mothers feet–  breaks down and becomes a man of peace.  That always moved me because I thought that underneath this ferocious confrontational almost psychopathic quality,  there is a boy, a lost boy inside Coriolanus.

Ron Bennington:  And that’s such a heartbreaking scene for me because still, nobody was thinking of him.  It was still about what was best for everyone else.

Ralph Fiennes:  Yep.  I think he’s like a lost boy in a tunnel in a sort of armor of warriorship or whatever he’s learned to be.  And there’s a sort of armor of manliness, but underneath it….and she breaks it.  The mother figure who’s created him, pushes him to the point where he… “Mother, mother, what have you done?” And I’ve always thought those line’s were just so..heartbreaking.

Ron Bennington: It just goes to show if you don’t learn the political game, if you don’t learn the sales game, content will be lost.  Whatever you really achieve, you have to be able to play the game.

Ralph Fiennes:  And he refuses to play the game or when he does try, he can’t. He can’t function in this political…. There are moments in the film where I have him meet a cleaner in a corridor, or a boy on a horse that kind of suggest his aloneness in the face of other people. He doesn’t have the ability to naturally socially negotiate or interact with someone.   He’s kind of locked. He cant bear to hear himself praised.  The only place where he feels any kind of emotion, I think, is when he’s in the battlefield.  Only when he’s fighting does he feel fulfilled.  Which is disturbing.

Ron Bennington:  Then the one person he feels any connection to is his greatest enemy.

Ralph Fiennes:  Well there’s no question there is kind of an undertow of homoerotic attraction for sure.

Ron Bennington:  Which also kind of reminds me of sport.  Where the only person who understands….

Ralph Fiennes:  …is your competitor. Yeah, yeah. I think its a brilliant portrayal of enmity with, like you say, sportsmen who are lined up to destroy each other.  I’m thinking of boxers particularly.  Where you see that respect.  I see it at the end of fights.  The other defines them.

Ron Bennington:  And Butler is amazingly physical in this role.  It was perfect casting.

Ralph Fiennes:  I think he’s wonderful in it, Gerry. He has this extraordinary sort of a physical charisma and I think he speaks it beautifully in an understated way.  There’s one scene where he gets very emotional, which is a discovery of his in a way.  Which is, we set up a scene where he sees a murdered family in a car.  This is inspired by horrific images I’ve seen  from war zones of civilians brutally murdered and left.  And so in this, John Logan and I– who wrote the screenplay– Gerry’s character encounters this atrocity and then the emotion is so strong, he sort of works himself up to an extreme vow of vengeance.  Well that was amazing to see Gerry do that.  He found some extraordinary raw power there that we all applauded him at the end.  We were all very moved by it, the end of that shot.

Ron Bennington:  Yeah it seems that he could have, younger in life, surrendered himself to the warrior mentality.  He gives off that feeling.  But you say, about writing the screenplay, how does one go about writing Shakespeare?  Is it a matter of editing

Ralph Fiennes:  Well I was very lucky that one of the people responsible for making this film possible was John Logan who wrote the screenplay. People know him from Gladiator and Aviator,  and now from Hugo.  I was given the opportunity to pitch it to him, this modern day Coriolanus, and he responded with real enthusiasm and went and wrote this amazing screenplay.  In a way,  his enthusiastic response was the first real validation of the idea.  Cause I could see people going “hmm I don’t know this Shakespeare, first time director.”   So yea we cut it, we had to edit aggressively.  So we kept the Shakespeare dialog but John’s real genius is that he writes on the page in such a way that you feel, you see the movie happening.  So the reader kind of feels the film and is not put off.  Some people are not familiar with reading five or six, ten lines of Shakespeare on the page.  So John’s descriptive power through the screenplay is really the thing that made people excited about it.

Ron Bennington:   I love the film cause you don’t really know where you are.  It’s almost like its a different universe in a way. It’s totally modern, but at the same time, it’s not completely…

Ralph Fiennes:  Nothing in it is futuristic.  Everything in it is of today but we shot it in Belgrade in Serbia.   Some people think we were trying to make a point about the  Bosnian-Yugoslav conflict.  We’re not.  Belgrade is the place we could afford to make it.  But it also has an amazing quality Belgrade.  It’s just the kind of city that’s been through a lot, and you feel it in the texture of the buildings.

Ron Bennington:  For you directing this, and by the way reviews are coming back incredibly strong.  So it gives you that opportunity, I’m sure to keep directing films.  Is that something that interests you?

Ralph Fiennes:  Very much.  I was blessed with an extraordinary crew.  And there were so many…  Barry Ackroyd, cinemetographer, Nick Gaster who edited it, wonderful producers….a wonderful lady Joan Washington who was there to guide me in my own performance.  Many many people whose expertise I one hundred percent relied on. But i loved the collaborative nature of it and I had a good experience and I would love to direct again.  It was something I’d been thinking about for some time and I’ve come out of it feeling inspired to go for  it again.

Ron Bennington:  It’s interesting though that you picked a project that had such a small landing field.  You had to hit this one perfectly to succeed.

Ralph Fiennes:  It came from some real inner conviction that this jagged political tragedy had something to say about today.  I couldn’t let go of it.  I knew that people’s response was, “oh that’s a tough one to crack, how can you possibly sell that,” but I just couldn’t let go of it.

Ron Bennington:  Do you always make decisions from the subconscious like that?

Ralph Fiennes:  I think so.  Certainly the work I’m most proud of, or the work I’ve most enjoyed or felt most stimulted by…I’ve always come to it from a gut instinct.

Ron Bennington:  Well thank you so much for coming in, it’s an extraordinary film.

Ralph Fiennes:  It’s been great talking to you.

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You can hear this interview in its entirety exclusively on SiriusXM satellite radio.  Not yet a subscriber?  Click here for a free trial subscription.