Macbeth ** (2015, Michael Fassbender, Marion Cotillard, Sean Harris, David Thewlis, Jack Reynor, Elizabeth Debicki) – Movie Review

Australian director Justin Kurzel (Snowtown) throws the baby out with bathwater in his imaginative, freewheeling attempt to turn the Scottish Play into what amounts to a brutal Western movie.

Jacob Koskoff, Michael Lesslie and Todd Louiso fail to do full justice to William Shakespeare in their unsatisfactory baggage-dumping screenplay of the stage play. Unfortunately, it throws out more than the excess baggage the play has accumulated over the centuries. It throws out much of its text and meaning and characters.

I get that Kurzel doesn’t want to make another heavy-handed filmed theatre movie of a play that has been well used already. But, reimaging it so much, why doesn’t he just dump Shakespeare entirely and simply film another story? One that would suit his tastes and methods and talents far better.

Michael Fassbender could be well cast as Macbeth in a different film, or at least as a random Scots warrior king in a historical crime thriller. He really looks and acts the part. He can be a truly great screen actor, but not here. Marion Cotillard is hopelessly miscast as Lady Macbeth, despite valiantly struggling with the Scots accent, a general problem throughout the film, as is the Shakespearean verse that no one here seems versed in.

Still, I liked Sean Harris’s Macduff, David Thewlis’s Duncan and (though with little to do) Jack Reynor’s Malcolm. They have the right stuff. The film looks startling, too, in its gloomy, spare and savage way. It’s down to earth, earthy and straightforward, addressing the audience directly. It’s good that is not arty farty and that it’s so accessible.

None of this leads to much Shakespearean fun or entertainment or illumination value, but it is often striking and impressive. And it’s taken at a brisk, dynamic trot, all over in a  short running time of 113 minutes.

The warning is that, with all its stabbings and slashings, this is by far the most grim, violent and disturbing adaptation of Macbeth, and possibly of any Shakespeare adaptation. It is certificate 15.

There are famous previous movie versions by film masters Orson Welles and Roman Polanski in 1948 and 1971.

http://derekwinnert.com/macbeth-1948-orson-welles-classic-film-review-773/

http://derekwinnert.com/macbeth-roman-polanski-1971-classic-film-review-774/

© Derek Winnert 2015 Movie Review

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