Macbeth

Macbeth (15)

UK 2015 Dir: Justin Kurzel Cast: Michael Fassbender, Marion Cotillard, Paddy Considine, Sean Harris, David Thewlis, Jack Reynor

In his bold Bard adaptation, Australian director Justin Kurzel hasn’t quite unseamed Macbeth from the nave to the chops. However, the Snowtown filmmaker does present us with one of the most visually arresting and accessible takes on Shakespeare’s tragedy, stripping out a great deal of the text and allowing his visual artistry to articulate the play’s enduring themes of hubris, honour and betrayal. Given Macbeth’s innately cinematic qualities of violence, landscapes and the supernatural, it’s perhaps surprising to note its relatively infrequent cinematic adaptations: besides Orson Welles’ 1948 version, the most significant is Roman Polanski’s, released in 1971 in the wake of his wife Sharon Tate’s murder.

As for Kurzel’s movie, it’s brilliantly cast. The ever-dynamic Michael Fassbender plays the eponymous Thane of Glamis whose psychological motivations, along with those of his scheming wife (the equally excellent Marion Cotillard), are sketched more explicitly right from the opening frames. The film begins with a chilling shot of child bereavement suffered by the couple, a brief but potent moment that takes the text into intriguing new directions, particularly when seen in the context of one especially disturbing scene later on.

Following this scene of domestic discord, we’re then plunged into bloody battle on the mist-strewn Scottish highlands, Kurzel’s direction transforming the landscape into a miasma of slow-motion, blood, clashing swords and, boldly placed in the midst of the action, an appearance by the three witches who ultimately prophesise that Macbeth will become King. It’s a pleasingly ambiguous, visceral interpretation: just as Macbeth and his close associate Banquo (Paddy Considine) question what they’ve seen, so we’re forced to ask whether the bold warrior is perhaps suffering from the Dark Age equivalent of post-traumatic stress disorder.

It’s then back to tradition: having received word of Macbeth’s bravery on the battlefield, King Duncan (David Thewlis) looks to bestow upon him the honour of becoming Thane of Cawdor. However, Lady Macbeth exerts her insidious influence and persuades her husband to murder the King and seize the throne, her actions possibly motivated by the loss of her child at the start of the drama (although it’s never so glibly stated).

One of the play’s most pivotal scenes, the murder is here rendered as a profoundly damaging moment for the central character: more than the tearing of flesh and bone, one senses Macbeth’s already fragile mind also tearing, chillingly exemplified afterwards when the act of washing blood from his hands seems utterly futile. Soon crowned King, Macbeth’s mind full of scorpions soon begins to unravel into paranoia and violence.

Fassbender is typically superb in the role. That he convinces in the muscular battle scenes is hardly surprising: this is an actor whose physical commitment has stunned in films such as Hunger, Shame and 12 Years a Slave. However, it’s the actor’s emotional sensitivity in depicting the unpeeling of Macbeth’s mind that really compels, Fassbender’s eyes hollowing out in front of us and the handsome features transforming into a leering, skeletal smile. If the character’s psychological collapse occasionally feels rushed, the actor deserves credit for making us believe it, the monologue over Macbeth’s decision to murder close ally Banquo surely one of the best-acted scenes of the year.

Equally superb is Cotillard, a dab hand at conveying scheming malevolence in the likes of Inception and The Dark Knight Rises. Refreshingly however, Kurzel’s take emphasises her increasingly sympathetic nature in contrast with Macbeth’s blood-fuelled madness, the ‘out damned spot’ monologue here depicted in an extraordinary single shot, the actress fiercely holding the audience’s attention in close-up.

Fassbender and Cotillard make for a broiling double act that helps reclaim the characters from the era of fusty smocks whilst ensuring their relevance for a modern audience. In truth though, the whole cast is outstanding: Paddy Considine’s slow-burning suspicion as Banquo is brilliantly wrought, and the famous ghost sequence is chillingly understated. And making the jump to an atypically sympathetic role, Sean Harris stuns as Macduff, the intensity boiling over in a tragic late scene when, in the presence of the noble Malcolm (Jack Reynor), he fully comprehends the madness of Macbeth’s actions.

However, the other true star of the movie is Kurzel himself. His disturbing 2011 Australian drama Snowtown demonstrated his skill with slow-burning atmosphere, and here he gets an opportunity to paint on an even grander scale, the landscapes conveying the play’s emotional trajectory even when the characters aren’t saying a word. From sepulchral, stained-glass interiors to misty moors and an astonishing, fire and brimstone finale, this is a Macbeth that exerts the relentless suction power of a Scottish swamp, never letting go until the end.