Journal Article

Coriolanus

Crowl, Samuel

2012

Overview

The live action news report shows protestors attacking the fence surrounding the grain silos and they are met by troops led by a bald, hawk-nosed, eagle-eyed general with caius martius printed on the pocket of his uniform for whom we quickly learn language is power: \"He that will give good words to thee will flatter / Beneath abhorring. The film also contains uncanny echoes of the Arab Spring from Cairo to Tripoli to Homs using many of the same techniques (handheld camera, tight shots, simultaneous shooting from multiple perspectives) and the cinematographer (Barry Ackroyd) that defined Kathryn Bigelow's Academy Award-winning The Hurt Locker. [...]the only long stretch of the film where the news cameras themselves are banished is on his long journey on foot to \"a world elsewhere.\" Logan's screenplay does omit the Belly and the Butterfly but manages in two hours of film time to retain many of the text's pithy one and two-liners (\"He is a lion I am proud to hunt,\" \"Make you a sword of me,\" \"What I think I utter, and spend my malice in my breath,\" \"He was a thing of blood,\" \"Hear you this Triton of the minnows,\" \"You are too absolute,\" \"Anger's my meat; I sup upon myself,\" \"suffered me by the voice of slaves to be / Whooped out of Rome,\" \"I think he'll be to Rome / As is the osprey to the fish, who takes it / By sovereignty of nature,\" \"O mother, mother!

• Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
• Subject: Butler, Gerard / Fiennes, Ralph / Nesbitt, James / Redgrave, Vanessa