"From man to dragon": Coriolanus (2011)

Shakespeare assumed we’d come to the theater ready to use our imaginations. His speeches, as delivered by the performers, provide the drama, but trappings such as weather and the terrain of the setting, as described in the speeches, are up to us to imagine. Similarly, as the texts come to us today, a Shakespeare play is a bare template open to an imaginative director’s visualization. Shakespeare doesn’t seem to have been big on stage directions. In the famous duel scene in Hamlet, the spare stage direction They play has invited countless interpretations for the choreography of this dramatic episode. But Hamlet is the kind of Shakespeare play that doesn’t need a lot of effort from actors or set designers to enhance its language. The language alone is engrossing.

Shakespeare’s Coriolanus, however, is one of those utilitarian Shakespeare plays whose functional speeches require a little more effort from a director, and Coriolanus, as directed by Ralph Fiennes, gets its drama pumped up by the director’s imaginative approach. Here, Fiennes takes the tragedy of Caius Marcius Coriolanus, the kind of problem general like Patton or Custer (before the Little Bighorn) who gets an A in War but an F in Diplomacy, and establishes a 1990s Bosnia/Serbia mise-en-scène replete with villages in rocky places, garbage-cluttered streets, and unsavory stray dogs. Employing newsreel footage, news channel feeds, and scenes set in the streets and governmental chambers of a place called Rome, Fiennes really fits the language into the setting in a way that works very smoothly so that when CNN-style pundits exchange commentary in Elizabethan diction, it doesn’t seem strange at all.

In this world of a discontented populace protesting the economy and Kevlar-clad soldiers engaged in fierce firefights with insurgents toting AK-47s, Caius Marcius, as played by Ralph Fiennes, sacrifices his blood for his country by fighting Rome’s chief enemy, Tullus Aufidius. As Aufidius, Gerard Butler is superb, enhancing the drama of lines that often lack the memorable imagery of Shakespeare’s better plays. The acting is excellent throughout the film, with Jessica Chastain as Virgilia, Corolanus’s wife, and the especially engaging Vanessa Redgrave as Volumnia, his mother. Though Redgrave loses us in some of Shakespeare’s more convoluted syntax that cries out desperately for a full stop, her lines are earnestly and believably delivered, and she steals the show when she begs her vengeful, banished son, who joins forces with Aufidius, to spare Rome from invasion.

"What do you see?" - April 14, 1912

On this night, one hundred years ago, the R.M.S.Titanic approached its fateful encounter with a chunk of ice.

After sighting the huge iceberg, Lookout Frederick Fleet rang the crow’s nest bell three times between 11:30 and 11:40 on the night of April 14, 1912.

“Is someone there?” he said over the phone to the bridge.

“What do you see?” said Sixth Officer Moody.

“Iceberg right ahead.”

Over at The Sheila Variations, Sheila has posted a poignant commemoration of the sinking of the Titanic as a tribute to Titanic obsessives.

Being a Titanic obsessive myself, I wanted to post a few comments in way of my own commemoration.

My obsession with Titanic began when I was 10 years old or so and I saw Titanic (1953), with Clifton Webb and Barbra Stanwyck, on television. I was duly obsessed. I watched the movie whenever it was on TV. Imitating the dialogue and sound effects from the film, I re-enacted the sinking in the bathtub countless times.



Despite the film’s romantic and inaccurate depiction of the sinking (an underwater shot shows the ship’s portside hull hitting the iceberg), I still consider it a touching and dramatic account of this tragic disaster. I love how it starts out with the iceberg rising to the surface of the sea. It builds wonderful tension during the moments before the collision. Even James Cameron pays tribute to the film by borrowing the line about “announcing dinner as though it were a cavalry charge” from Clifton Webb. For a much more accurate account, the fine A Night to Remember (1958), based on Walter Lord’s non-fictional account, holds up dramatically.

From these 50s movies, my obsession went on to books that debunked the legends and set me straight on the facts.

Throughout my life, I have enjoyed a number of Titanic thrills:

Reading the National Geographic article of Robert Ballard’s discovery of how the Titanic really sank when I had moved to Cape Cod, not far from Woods Hole where Ballard's expedition began.



Seeing the 28-foot model used in the 1953 film at the Fall River Marine Museum.

Discovering Ken Marschall's glorious book of paintings (the basis for much of the art direction in Cameron's Titanic) before I even knew James Cameron was planning his own film.


Seeing James Cameron’s Titanic (1997) six times at the theater: twice in December, 1997, and then once a month through April, 1998. Sometimes I shudder at some of the film’s silly bits, but this is a meticulously researched film and the depiction of the sinking is amazing. Reading James Cameron’s Titanic, the book about the making of the film by Ed W. Marsh, is an inspiring account of the epic extent to which the creative process can go.

(In defense of the film’s accuracy, I wrote a rebuttal to a local Harbormaster who went on record in a Cape Cod Times article reporting viewers’ opinions to say that the helmsman in the movie turns the ship’s wheel the wrong way to go “hard a’ starboard.” To prove him wrong, I discovered a passage from the Titanic inquest which clearly states that Quartermaster Hichens turned the wheel “counter-clockwise,” as in the film, not toward starboard, because in those days British commands were based on a sailboat with a tiller. Thus, going “hard a’ starboard” meant turning the stern to starboard, sending the ship’s bow to port. I wrote the Harbormaster but never got a reply.)

Seeing the traveling Titanic: the Artifact Exhibit in San Francisco and touching a piece of the hull!

Being inspired by Titanic-obsessed girls in my Drama Club to write my own full length Titanic stage play, with historical and original fictional characters, and producing it at the high school where I teach.

Seeing the re-release of Titanic (1997) - the best screen experience I’ve seen in a long time.

Well, time to go. It’s the night of April 13th on screen and Robert Wagner gets to dance with Audrey Dalton, Clifton Webb learns he is not the father of his “son,” and a drunken Richard Basehart reveals he is an excommunicated Catholic priest. In James Cameron’s film, the night of April 13th covers Frances Fisher cinching Kate Winslet up in a corset. All the drama, passion, heroism, tragedy, and fateful serendipity take place on the night of April 14th – 15th, 1912.

"Curtains" - High School Students Write About The Tree of Life

Every year in my A.P. Literature and Composition class for high school seniors, in an effort to change the pace and take a break from reading heady literature, I show Terrence Malick’s Days of Heaven. I choose this movie because I know none of my students have seen it, and I’ve always been pleased by the very positive responses. After watching, the students write an essay exploring the themes of longing, sin, and damnation in an indifferent world, and how the imagery reflects those themes. I often get essays that are some of the students’ best work.

This year, with the Academy Award nominations coming out at about the same time, my students were aware that The Tree of Life is another film by Malick, and I told them I would show them the opening forty-five minutes and I would ask them to make observations about images that seem to echo Days of Heaven. Very perceptively they commented about “nature,” “snakes,” “curtains.”

When I asked them how they felt about the film, they gave the following responses:

“This movie isn’t about anything.”

“It’s like a long novel.”

“It’s like a bunch of screensavers.”

But responses were positive enough that I decided to show them the whole movie if they would write an essay on it. After finishing the film, most of them were glad they had seen it. One girl said she loved how the film tells its story with symbolism. One boy admitted it just wasn’t his cup of tea. Another girl remarked how she didn’t do well with “that religious chorus music.”

Nevertheless, my students wrote some well-written, perceptive essays analyzing the character of Jack, his conflicts, his motives, and what the imagery reveals about him.

Below, with my students' permission, I have included unedited excerpts written by each of my young film writers:

Down and Out in District 12: The Hunger Games

The Hunger Games, based on the young adult event novel by Suzanne Collins, is a gimmicky story that is, fortunately, less gimmicky as a film.

The film’s strengths are the solid presence of Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss Everdeen, an empowering female role model for millions of teenage girls, and a gripping opening sequence: the Reaping, a ceremony in which two “tributes” are randomly picked from 12 districts of downtrodden proletariat to provide fodder for a gladiatorial survival contest that entertains the aristocrats of the totalitarian Capitol.

Here, director Gary Ross employs a jittery camera and harsh lighting to capture the visceral gravity of a ceremony that is essentially ritualistic execution. The seriousness of this situation is also present in scenes set in the aristocratic Capitol, a vast city standing in bold contrast with the poverty of District 12, where the gaudily coiffed and costumed families of the privileged class get gleeful enjoyment out of a ghastly spectacle.

But the Reaping sequence stands out as the film’s most memorable moment. Thoughtful art direction and an excellent musical score provide a strong introduction to this sequence. The twang of guitars accompanying various shots of drab clapboard houses, clothes lines, and an old man nibbling on bones establish a setting as poor and forlorn as regions of Appalachia. In addition, the performances of Jennifer Lawrence and little Willow Shields, as Katniss’s sister, Prim, pack this episode with a poignant punch.

The Enigma of Kevin: We Need to Talk About Kevin (2011)

Yesterday afternoon I took in a screening of Lynne Ramsey’s We Need to Talk About Kevin, a devastating, artistically shot, beautifully performed film about a woman who must suffer the eternal anguish of being the mother of a teenage son who has committed multiple murders in a high school killing spree.

It was playing in the screening room in the basement of the Cape Cod Museum of Art in Dennis where I suffered very curious viewing circumstances. The small theater, that seats out a hundred, is simply big screen projection of a DVD. (The Cape Cinema was closed for renovations.) It was Thursday afternoon, I had no afternoon classes, so I was able to catch a 2:00 o’clock showing with an audience of retirees whose viewing manners left much to be desired: rustling of homemade popcorn in paper bags; talking during the opening scenes; and the woman next to me actually sang along with one of the rock songs used in the film. On top of that, the owner of the Cape Cinema had trouble with the projector, and it took a good five minutes to get the thing going.

Never again to the screening room for me! But I appreciated what I saw, and I offer a few observations in the way of encouraging other moviegoers to see the film and comment here.

Tilda Swinton plays Eva Khatchadourian, a passionate traveler and writer who becomes an erstwhile mother of a difficult child. Kevin constantly cries as an infant and is late to speak and become potty-trained. As a teenager, Kevin is clearly a sociopath: withdrawn, hostile, without remorse, capable of cruelties that escalate in severity. He is a scary child without a conscience, played memorably by Ezra Miller. Strangely, neither Eva nor her complacent, oblivious husband, Franklin (John C. Reilly), ever suggests that Kevin needs to see a psychologist, even after Kevin grinds up his little sister’s guinea pig in the garbage disposal.

Besides being wonderfully performed, the film is visually provocative. In one of the opening images, a massive scrum of bodies surges back and forth in a red mess of tomatoes churned up during the tomato festival in Bunyol, Spain. Eva, the free-spirited traveler, revels in a sea of red. But this chaos of redness is suggestive of much more serious issues, and the film keeps reminding us of redness throughout.

The 84th Academy Awards in an Alternate Universe

Best Director: Terrence Malick


Best Picture: The Tree of Life