![]() Kurzel does whatever he can do make every scene more nightmarish, whether that means including a procession of zombies (you read that correctly), or giving an inspired, apocalyptic twist to the Birnam Wood prophecy. Obliterating any trace of stage-bound stuffiness, he replaces it with the mud and gore of an anti-war movie and the stylised immediacy of a graphic novel: the slow-motion blood-spurting recalls a previous Fassbender film, 300, except with jagged wounds in place of washboard stomachs. Kurzel, the Australian director of Snowtown, has made a film which is, to quote the witches, bloody, bold and resolute. The wind whistles, thunder rumbles, and there is more rolling fog than in a decade’s worth of Hammer horror movies. And after that, Macbeth and Lady Macbeth don’t entertain their grateful king in a fine castle, but in a scattering of tents on a moorland. It’s only Macbeth’s wild-eyed viciousness that wins the day.Īfterwards, we move onto the cheery sight of a dog chewing on a corpse, while Macbeth and his lieutenant, Banquo (Paddy Considine), sleep on the freezing ground. Macbeth’s woad-smeared troops simply charge at their opponents like beery football hooligans. Minutes later, the battle in which Macbeth proves his worth to King Duncan (David Thewlis) is hardly a display of chivalric valour and charismatic leadership. Radically cutting down and revising Shakeseare’s text, Kurzel and his co-writers open with a stark, wordless scene of Macbeth and his wife (Marion Cotillard) on a bleak hillside, lighting a funeral pyre for their baby. The reason Kurzel’s Macbeth is so awe-inspiring, but also vaguely unsatisfying, is that it’s actually set in Hell. Macbeth himself, Michael Fassbender, has obviously been listening to his X-Men buddy, James McAvoy: close your eyes and you can picture McAvoy speaking every line.īut despite these tartan touches, it’s soon apparent that the film isn’t set in 11th-Century Scotland at all. ![]() The looming mountains of the Highlands are rarely out of shot, every man in the cast has been issued with a regulation straggly ginger beard, and the actors (with one exception) have almost-perfect Scottish accents. theaters.Superstitious actors like to call Macbeth “the Scottish play”, but Shakespeare’s tragedy of vaulting ambition has never been more Scottish than it is in Justin Kurzel’s startling adaptation. audiences will see Fassbender's portrayal of “Macbeth” on the big screen in early 2015, but it's not clear when the adaptation from the producers of “The King's Speech” will hit U.S. He's having these hallucinations, and he needs to return to the violence to find some sort of clarity, or peace.”Īlso read: Will Bryan Singer Sex Allegations Hurt ‘X-Men: Days of Future Past’ at Box Office? In World War I they called it battle fatigue, and it was probably more horrific in Macbeth's days, when they were killing with their bare hands, and driving a blade through bodies. Justin set the seed of the idea in my head,” Fassbender said. It makes total sense, when you think about it. “He's suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. In Fassbender's mind, Macbeth's descent into madness isn't caused simply by a lust for power, but a result of the bloody battles he has fought as leader of the Scottish army. outlet gave audiences the first look at Fassbender as Macbeth ( above), as well as Cotillard as the woman who drives him to murder King Duncan.Īlso read: I Don't Know What Bryan Singer Did, and Neither Do You
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