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Ralph Fiennes and Gerard Butler in Coriolanus

If there’s a lesson to be learned from this film, it’s that the secret to adapting Shakespeare — whether in purist or modern form — lies less in the trappings and more in the words.
   
Coriolanus, the directing debut of actor Ralph Fiennes (who also stars in it), updates Shakespeare’s tragedy from ancient to modern Rome, at least as far as architecture, technology and clothing go. The result is an alternate-reality modern Rome and a double-anachronism — an ancient tragedy told in 17th-century English.
   
All of which begs the question: why re-cast this tragedy in such fashion?
   
Quite possibly, the filmmakers feared audiences might be even less accepting of what’s a tough sell to begin with these days. One can imagine Fiennes and screenwriter John Logan saying: "It’s enough that we’re keeping all these confounded ‘thees’ and ‘thous!’ No one’s going to buy a ticket for blasted togas and sandals as well!"
   
Perhaps they’re right.
   
What can be said is that Coriolanus passes the most important test of any adaptation of the Bard — it makes the material and the language work in and of itself.
   
Fiennes, for instance, owns his role and dialogue from the first. As military commander Caius Martius, he faces down a crowd rioting over stores of grain being hoarded from them.
   
Martius eventually puts down the precipitating factor behind the unrest — an attack by the Volscians, led by Tullus Aufidius (Gerard Butler). He subsequently campaigns for consul, but his political enemies stir up still-simmering public resentment against him.
   
"I turn my back," he finally spits and then, to Rome’s collective shock, he aligns with Aufidius for revenge.
   
What’s striking about this adaptation are the great stretches of film that forego dialogue altogether — a move that reflects Fiennes’ commitment to making the material work cinematically. You don’t have to fully grasp the words to glean their meaning and the gravity.
   
Of course, Coriolanus isn’t as well-known as Shakespeare’s other plays, yet it all works.
   
What the film’s modern context underlines is that the story of human societies has for millennia been about the willingness of the few to crown themselves the betters of the many.
   
And that hubris is still the Achilles’ heel of far too many.