Scheming and bloodshed are common motifs in Shakespeare’s
plays, but Macbeth might be the most
directly engaged with the guts of evil, following a conflicted murderer into
nasty tangles of messy guilt, a tortured conscience. Macbeth, haunted by ghosts
and bewitched by ambition, reluctantly screws his courage to the sticking place
and kills King Duncan, then spends the rest of the narrative desperately trying
to outrun the moral consequences and mortal punishments he rightly fears. He
becomes a tyrant, driven mad. The latest cinematic staging of the play imagines
this story in muddy period-appropriate grime and on nightmarish landscapes of
vivid elements: misty moors, foggy battlefields, red clouds, pale dawns,
pouring rain. Director Justin Kurzel, whose first two films were unsettling
crime pictures, here digs into a disturbed mindset with a cinematic
theatricality, emphasizing the visceral moments, simmering with unease, a
droning score layering a haze of doom and dread over it all.
It opens with a war, two armies charging towards each other
on the field of battle. Kurzel cuts between distant wide shots of running with
close-ups of extreme slow-motion howls and cries. The clamor and gore seems
equally inspired by Braveheart and Game of Thrones, but seen through a dark
mirror. Emerging victorious, Macbeth (Michael Fassbender) is nonetheless
disturbed by spectral visions of Witches who prophesize he’ll soon be king.
What follows should be familiar to anyone even vaguely familiar with
Shakespeare. Lady Macbeth (Marion Cotillard), encourages this ambition by any
means necessary. Chiding him for having too much milk of human kindness, she
knows murder would help them rise to power. Soon, Duncan (David Thewlis) is
slain, his son, the prince (Jack Reynor), chased off, and the throne passes to
Macbeth, who wears the crown heavily with the burden of the price he paid to
get it.
Kurzel has assembled a terrific cast up to the challenge of
Shakespearean language. Although screenwriters Jacob Koskoff, Michael Lesslie,
and Todd Louiso have abridged the text, the performers have more than enough to
chew on. Tremendous supporting work from Paddy Considine (as Banquo, Macbeth’s
friend until paranoia sets in) and especially Sean Harris and Elizabeth Debicki
(as the Macduffs, who bear the brunt of Macbeth’s wrath, and are Scotland’s
last best hope for a better future) gives the movie the heft it needs to power
its angst. They have palpable pain, while taking strong center stage are the
pair of powerful leads. Cotillard whispers most of her lines, as if her Lady
Macbeth can’t quite believe the influence she wields, and then falls apart
trying to get that damned spot off her conscience. Fassbender quakes and grits
his teeth, hollers and seethes, sweats and bleeds, selling all too well a man
in the process of rending his soul in two over surging dueling feelings of
guilt and power. It’s a movie of no small emotional movements, roiling with
immediacy.
With the look of a hazy walking stress dream brought to life
by cinematographer Adam Arkapaw (True
Detective) and cut together by editor Chris Dickens (Berberian Sound Studio), there’s an ethereal quality. The wide
screen compositions flicker with bad weather and candlelight; the images flow
out of sync with muttered soliloquies, flowing between flashbacks and
premonitions, dreams and visions. In The
Riverside Shakespeare, literary critic Frank Kermode wrote, “The suffering
of the Macbeths may be thought of as caused by the pressure of the world of
order slowly resuming its true shape and crushing them. This is the work of
time…” Kurzel brings to life this sense of cosmic temporal fracture, the
Macbeths’ foul and fair disjunction unleashing a sickness in the world, one
that’ll in turn crush them under its chaos. Although strictly, faithfully
linear, its visual strategies suggest that it’s all happening at once. The
decision to go down a bad path leads inevitably to a host of nasty outcomes.
A commitment to slippery cutting and whispered mumbling has
its limitations, and occasional monotony, as Kurzel’s vision doesn’t allow for
any modulation of tone. There’s no time for small or soft moments when large
anxieties fill the frame’s austere, disturbing beauty. As ostentatious as the
striking imagery is, it occasionally detracts from the lines, or works at
cross-purposes to the energy of the text. Still, it’s an engaged synthesis of
ways to approach the play, with some of the shadowy brooding of Orson Welles’
take, and a bit of the howl of despair of Roman Polanski’s. The climactic
confrontation is set on a field of fire, embers churning behind the combatants
in a blood-orange sky ripped with smoke. It’s not exactly subtle, but it’s
passionate. Kurzel takes the play seriously, has great actors delivering the
classic turns of phrase, and creates a space of unceasing emotional turmoil. It’s
rich, even when it’s not entirely satisfying. Besides, it’s always a treat to
see creative minds put to use bringing more stagings of Shakespeare into our
lives.
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