Macbeth (2015)

Justin Kurzel's adaptation of Macbeth is in many ways a boon to anyone who loves the play - superb performances, a period-appropriate setting with beautiful cinematography, meticulous production design, and a distinctive visual style, full of saturated colours and minimalist, spare compositions. The effort put into often-neglected elements of its performance, such as the choreography of the final duel between Macbeth and Macduff, is appreciated. It wouldn't bore newcomers to Shakespeare, and as someone constantly conscious that the majority of people see the plays more as something to be gulped down like medicine than as genuinely compelling entertainment, it's a relief to have adaptations like this.

With that out of the way, it's frequently lacking as an adaptation of the text. The film follows the interpretation that Lady Macbeth had children. This has foundation depending on the reading of 'I have given suck, and know / how tender 'tis to love the babe that milks me' - and it can give all sorts of interesting implications to the marital relationship of the central duo, but it doesn't fully deliver on them. It does have a particular performance choice when Macbeth delivers a line to the Lady regarding the 'fruitless crown', where as he does it, he rests his dagger against her stomach - against her womb - not in overt threat (mostly just as a gesturing tool), but with the obvious implication of a latent violence. Real resentment is expressed in that scene from Macbeth to Lady Macbeth regarding her inability to give him a new child so his line isn't fruitless. 

The choice to show Macbeth and Lady Macbeth lighting their dead son's funeral pyre at the beginning adds a poignant double meaning to 'To bed, to bed! there's knocking at the gate: / come, come, come, come, give me your hand.', which Cotillard plays to the hilt. Sadly, Kurzel's direction chooses to hit the audience over the head with this point -  the double meaning of 'this could refer to her son' is understood the moment she says those lines, but Kurzel cuts from the shot focused straight on Cotillard to a shot which shows that she's literally seeing her dead son in front of her. In a similar case of stripping out any subtlety and dumbing down the material, an actual spot - in the sense of a pimple - is placed on Cotillard's face when she delivers 'Out, damn'd spot', which has the secondary effect of bathos when you remember the spot is supposed to be one of blood, on her hand. Yet not once does Cotillard look at her hand or try to rub it out during the speech.

This omission exemplifies a trend of naturalistic acting throughout the film, which I don't oppose on principle, but which hobbles the effectiveness of the speeches in this specific instance. Fassbender and Cotillard forgo gestures or movement, preferring to deliver their monologues and soliloquies by standing in one place and remaining fixed in a single attitude. Theatre often requires theatricality, and their choices result in frequently-inert delivery. They telegraph the emotions well, but they don't command the stage. 

The film focuses on Lady Macbeth more so than Macbeth, going so far as to include a scene (totally diverging from the play) where Macbeth has Lady Macduff and her children brought back to Dunsinane, tied to stakes, and burned alive, while an audience of his household retainers and Lady Macbeth watch on, disgusted, and Macbeth raves.  The purpose of the scene is to drive a further wedge between the two and explain the future disloyalty of Macbeth's people, but it remains an egregiously bad choice, being both obvious in its declaration of villainy (obviousness dogging Kurzel's choices throughout the film) and inappropriately public. Macbeth is characterised by the fact that all his crimes are done in the cover of night - the scene exemplifies the film's heavy-handed and unsubtle approach to establishing implications. When Fleance escapes the killers, he sees one of the witches as he runs, as if to tell the audience that the prophecy is working as intended - we know. 

The chopping-up of the play, the addition and subtraction of scenes which results in a cumulative simplification and dumbing-down of the text, also means that a lot of speeches lose their power, both by being removed from their proper context and from being cut altogether. Others, which remain, are underplayed disappointingly. 'Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow', is one of the greatest speeches of all time, and deserves a more stirring, heartbroken, hopeless rendition than the muted one Fassbender offers. 

The film presents the military aspect of Macbeth's identity front and center, featuring him coaxing a poor young boy into battle at the beginning, who is killed in the fight and later reappears as a ghost. It shows him caring for his fallen men and lighting their pyres after preparing their bodies for cremation. There's a emotional aspect to those gestures which could easily be tied into a larger angle regarding how the wanton loss of life in war is connected to the monarchy, and whether Macbeth's usurpation of the throne through the assassination of a single man can be considered morally worse than Duncan spending many lives to defend his throne when the kingdom would remain much the same under a different ruler. But this is never developed. 

Every time the film gains something, it loses something. The 'Had I but died an hour before this chance, / I had lived a blessed time' speech is delivered by Fassbender with sneering malevolence, to Malcolm alone. This explains ably why Malcolm might run off and inadvertently shoulder the blame for Duncan's assassination - because Macbeth made him fear for his life. But by making the choice to have Macbeth grin with malice, the film loses Macbeth's vulnerability and deep regret for having killed Duncan. Fassbender's Macbeth generally lacks the vulnerability which is so integral to his complexity. He's muscular, effusive, vigorous, and when he begins to crack, he cracks with deranged energy, not with inward terror. Even his sadness and despair is stolid.

While it's a good film in many ways and a good point of entry to Shakespeare, with excellent production values, as an adaptation of the text, Macbeth is frustratingly mediocre.