Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard star in Justin Kurzeil’s take on Shakespeare’s Macbeth – sexier and more psychological than most versions and very medieval.
In interviews, Fassbender has said that his Macbeth suffers from battlefield PTSD. As we see in this version of Macbeth, medieval warfare consisted of muddy guys rushing each other to hack, stab and bludgeon each other to death. Mostly, it seems, to hack. The soldiers wear facial warpaint that looks like it would if smeared on by men just before a battle.
Macbeth comes already damaged. Unlike Richard III, a Shakespearean villain who is just deliciously evil to the core, Macbeth is troubled, a man whose “dreams abuse the curtain of sleep.” But, as he is haunted by his own atrocities (especially killing his most loyal friend Banquo after Macbeth has already obtained the crown), Macbeth decompensates.
Lady Macbeth is the prototype of social climbers and strivers, pushing her hubbie to the forefront no matter the requisite carnage. Cotillard’s Lady Macbeth uses sex to persuade him on a course of action, and he exhales a post-orgasmic “settled” in agreement with her plot. After all, what’s sexier than power? Hearing Macbeth’s “I have done the deed” gets Lady Macbeth breathing really hard.
Both of them have fits in which they wander the windswept highlands in their sleepwear. Even with her over-the-top ruthlessness, Lady Macbeth starts out more stable and functional, trying valiantly to distract the court from gauging Macbeth’s ever more tottering sanity. But finally, the totality of their misdeeds becomes too heavy for even her to bear. Fassbender and Cotillard are excellent. So are Paddy Considine as Banquo and Sean Harris as Macduff.
All of the classic Macbethisms are here – “the be all and end all”, “out, damn spot!”, “unsex me here”, “the poisoned chalice” and “vaulting ambition”. That last term – the central subject of Macbeth – is a marvel of precision because ambition requires one to vault over and past other people. Ruthlessness is acting without or despite empathy for others. Those who are not sociopaths can be haunted by their own vaulting acts of ruthlessness. Kurzeil asks us to make that assessment of the two lead characters.
I really like Shakespeare movies because there are ways to advance Shakepeare’s stories that you just can’t do on stage. Realistic medieval filth is one. Large battle scenes, partially in slow motion is another. And Macbeth and Banquo are able to quietly reflect on their foretold futures while bedding down on the battlefield, not while pacing the stage and speaking loud enough for a live audience to hear. The soundtrack is filled with reedy drones that evoke bagpipes and covey dread and moral bleakness. (See my Best Shakespeare Movies – I’ll be adding this movie to that list.)
In just his second feature, Australian director Justin Kurzeil consistently make superb choices. Instead of novelties, the witches are spooky and mostly silent witnesses to the story; when Macbeth’s fortune is complete, they turn silently and melt away. I prefer the traditional way that Birnam Wood comes to Dunsinane Castle over Kurzeil’s solution, but’s that’s just me. The final shots are wholly original and leave us with a remind of the historical consequences yet to come.
Kurzeil’s Macbeth is well-crafted and thought-provoking, and one of the very best Shakespeare movies.