FIENNES SAYS THE BARD ASKS QUESTIONS PERTINENT TODAY

Ralph Fiennes said at the Berlin Film Festival on Monday that plans to make a film version of Coriolanus had “sat inside my head” since he appeared in a stage production of the Shakespeare play more than ten years ago. At a news conference at the festival, where the film, which he produced, directed, and starred in, received a warm reception from the press, Fiennes described the drama about a Roman warrior who eventually enters politics but is humiliated as an “urgent and contemporary story.” (He stages the film in a contemporary setting.) “I felt more and more that the world around us was the right setting for the piece,” he said. Shakespeare, he observed, “doesn’t give the audience any answers. I think he asks very strong questions about how society functions, how should it move forward. I think the end [presents] quite a devastating picture of how we so often fail to find a solution, because we are always in some kind of conflict and unrest.” Coriolanus is one of 16 international films that are competing for this year’s Golden Bear award, which will be presented on Saturday.