Review: Macbeth
Sunday, October 25, 2015 at 10:41PM Andrew here to talk about a Shakespeare adaptation
There’s a moment in the recent adaptation of Macbeth that’s legitimately surprising for audience, even those who have read the play. Towards the end of the film Marion Cotillard appears on screen for Lady Macbeth’s moment of reckoning – that iconic “Out damned spot!” speech. The scene unfolds, naturally, in a different fashion than it does in the play. The monologue, though, becomes especially striking when the camera draws back to reveal “who” she is speaking to. I won’t spoil it for those who haven’t seen it, but a few of the persons in the row behind me gasped at the cutaway. It’s meant to be a jolting moment in the film, and it is, although it’s also a baffling one. The moment has stuck with me since I’ve seen the film as I’ve tried to make sense of it within the film’s framework. And, the more I think on it, the more it emerges as emblematic of this adaptation.
Let it not be said that Justin Kurzel’s adaptation of Shakespeare’s Macbeth is not without ambition and energy. This Macbeth is transposed to the cinema in language that’s distinctly visual. This is a Macbeth about movement and space and contact, and then the ensuing loss of that same contact. The language of the film is restlessness and mournful agitation from its first shot and the entire fair is slick and confident, but I go back and forth on how effective it is.
On a technical level, this is an arresting adaptation. I always think of Macbeth as a Gothic play before Gothic was a thing. The ultimate gloominess, the supernatural tension, the fatalistic themes. The sound and the camera capture that moodiness but almost too well? Is Macbeth an evil man on the path of least righteousness or an ambitious man felled by his desires? Kurzel's vision seems more in line with the former and dramatic license is essential in any literary adaptation. But Kurzel, so attached to the gloominess of the plains, and less so to his protagonist, shifts the tension in the story with this reading. This tale of sound and fury immediately loses dramatic tension when our titular "hero" and his wife seem beyond redemption from their first scene together. This is a Macbeth whose life seemed suffused with gloom and despair even before the Witches prophesy.
But, for a visually complex film, Kurzel's Macbeth is startlingly prosaic in its actual rumination on the film's themes. For a play that's all about the political, Macbeth's own engagement with that aspect of the drama is seriously lacking. Then, there's the actual dialogue... It's probably a whole other level of nerdiness to ponder on Iambic Pentameter in a 2015 film, but Macbeth is a play with significantly little prose - even for a Shakespeare. The rhythms of the language is a key to the complexity of the drama, but here all the actors opt for a Naturalistic delivery which complements the gloom but also seems odd and even amusing in key scenes. It's a good reminder why many adaptations tend to update the dialogue to actual prose. Shakespeare verse is tricky.
Fassbender is the only actor who emerges close to unscathed from the collective inability to master the Shakespearean cadence. I run hot and cold on him as an actor but he's especially vivid here in a performance that's just the right level of unhinged. I'm more mixed on TFE favourite Marion Cotillard who has key moments of excellence (the Banquet scene for example) but seems hampered both by an oddly flat reading of the role and the film's inability to decide what to decide what her role in Macbeth's descent is.
Taking all this into consideration, it is not surprising that Macbeth's strongest moments becomes the ones without words - unusual, as it may be, for a Shakespeare adaptation. The opening sequence is a gem but even more so is the final battle where Macbeth meets his fate. When the film loses its words and luxuriates in its moods and ambient sound it is at its most confident.
Kurzel clearly understands the language of cinema but I'm not so certain he's interested in examining the language of Shakespeare. And, Macbeth, for all its ostensible blood and gore is more Hamlet than Titus Andronicus. The words are as important as the spectacle. Kurzel delivers heartily on the mood, making me think what interesting, stylised things he might do with a silent Macbeth.
And still, still, I do not feel unkindly towards the entire affair. Just like my own inclination to be sympathetic towards Macbeth's self-destructive ambition it's hard to not be charmed by how ambitious Kurzel tries to make this film. When I came out of the theatre my flatmate, who I saw it with asked if I liked it. “Not really,” I had to admit. “But, I’m glad I saw it.” I’m not entirely sure he telegraphs clearly what it wants to say about Macbeth, sometimes I'm not even sure he knows what he wants to say (I'm uncertain how he considers Lady Macbeth within the fabric of the entire story, for example). There is much which gets lost in the (gorgeous) fog of Adam Arkapaw’s cinematography (Emmy winner for Top of the Lake, True Detective), but even if I do not consider this a great Macbeth, it is a sometimes alluring one.
Reader Comments (15)
A little off-topic, but is the play currently playin in NYC "Sleep No More" an adaptation of Macbeth? Has anybody seen this play? Is it any good?
Pedro, Sleep No More is an immersive adaptation of Macbeth. Meaning, you wander around through a 1930s version of the story reset in a hotel. There's no wrong way to experience the event, but if you don't follow one of the major characters, you're not going understand the full story. It's really good.
I have absolutely no interest in seeing this. Your review solidified my indifference.
Is this even being released in cinemas,Steve Jobs flopped will that hurt it come nomination day.
Thanks for your review-- I had a similar reaction in that I can't say I particularly liked it but I'm still glad I saw it. I did think the cinematography was really lovely and I thought Fassbender was good, but on the whole something about the film just felt off for some reason.
I don't mean to be a jerk, but I wish you guys would proofread your entries before posting them. I found what you had to say very interesting and enlightening, but more than a few sentences read as if they had gone through an online translator. Otherwise, though, thanks for a very thoughtful review.
I saw this last week, and agree with you in terms of a visual spectacle. There were moments which left me breathless throughout. This is a version of Macbeth which is unconcerned with nuance (which is fine, this is Shakespeare working in an unusually spare and direct style compared with his other tragedies), but even if elements verge on the crude, it’s such an intensely complete vision of the story that all those criticisms feel like nitpicking.
I do disagree about the merits of the two lead performances. I think Fassbender is perhaps better in isolated moments then during some of the longer speeches (his reading of the line “Oh full of scorpions is my mind, dear wife” is both chilling and heartbreaking) but for me, Cotillard is the standout. She and the director have managed to make sense of a character who often appears nothing more than a plot device, and her emotional collapse is finely calibrated. There’s a scene after the crowning of Macbeth where they talk alone in a brightly lit throne room which is nevertheless one of the tensest scenes I’ve sat through in a long time, including the sickening way that Fassbender plays with a dagger against Cotillard’s stomach.
For me, the big issue is the pace, particularly in the last 20 minutes. You could describe it as ‘deliberate’ throughout, which works for the most part, but the sense of fate closing in on Macbeth isn’t terribly well realised and it robs the final Act of much of its power. The emotional climax is the burning of Macduff’s wife on the stake, followed by Cotillard’s incredible “Out damn spot” monologue and the film slightly loses control of its focus after that.
Still (and with the caveat that I haven't seen Throne of Bood), this is the best adaptation of Macbeth I've seen on screen
I loved this movie to pieces.Particularly that scene with which you opened your review.
@Pedro - as Robert G put it, it's not really a play. The actors are dancers, and they have no lines (unless you're one of the lucky viewers who get a one-to-one interaction). It's Macbeth mixed in with "Rebecca" and it's an absolutely sublime, slightly hallucinatory experience. If I had all the $$ in the world, I'd probably go once a month just to pass time in the dream-like world it creates. Really recommend going at least once.
Pedro - as with the others, I can't recommend it highly enough. Just be prepared to move fast and if you go with friends do NOT plan on staying by their side. Couples who tried to do that when I saw it were the worst, blocked others as they decided where to go and missed a lot of the action.
Macbeth as a play is overrated Shakespeare any way.
I found the film lacked a defining reason for existence. It's expertly made - Oscar nominations for costume, art direction, cinematography, sound, score could not refuted, although I doubt anything beyond costumes will actually come to pass - but it feels like Kurzel doesn't have anything to add to the MacBeth story or to Shakespeare. He has interpreted the text a certain way, but there's not actually much there for audiences to gleam from it that they likely don't already know. It says something that my favourite scene was the opening one, a scene not in the play or other versions, because it added something that I, and presumably others, hadn't quite thought of in much detail.
I saw this last week. I love Fassbender. I love Cotillard. But this movie put me to sleep. I just found it so boring and I couldn't engage whatsoever. Probably had more to do with my disinterest in Shakespeare though.
I call it MacMumbles - speak up !
it's a classic play for a reason.
I was the only one in the theater when I saw this last week. Granted, it was a midweek matinee, but that is quite sad.