Fatuous

Rating: 4/10 (20 January 2016)

While the strongest features of this version: the locations, photography and production design, are quite outstanding the overall impression is less than memorable. It is afflicted by a meddling director, changes that serves little purpose or revelation in the end, and all the normal problems of cinematic adaptations of Shakespeare.
A major defect is the music which constantly scrapes – telling us that all things are seething with malignancy. It does, however strain the nerves like a dentist's drill, and is just as annoying. In essence that is the flaw with the whole thing, and certainly the first hour which is dour and dreary, though not in a good way because it's so simplistically portentous and saved only by the scenery and the light.
The actors manage quite well, even if they speak in a very mannered sotto voce. In itself this is a weakness as it leads through most of the film to a vocal range that is very narrow. This pitch is evident between Macbeth and his wife as though all relationships are marked by the same register and it is necessarily identical between all parties. Paradoxically this approach leads Macbeth to be nearly unchanged from the beginning to the end, which is not how the play deals with the character. The important "Tomorrow" soliloquy is rendered lame by the continuity of the low voice which preceded it and so this speech is no different to the rest.
The typical problem of all cinematic adaptations of Shakespeare is apparent here. The two forms, poetic drama and cinema are anathema to each other. The former requires words and once they are edited it's not Shakespeare but an etiolated revision, replaced by montage and glances; which compared to a great text, are of very little consequence. Kurosawa's Throne of Blood was another prism by which to see this drama but it was only cognate in the same plot and story, not the language, and stands in the same way as his superb Ran is to King Lear.
There are several film versions of this play and now there are more filmed staged versions to view and to compare. This particular version looks quite pointless by comparison. It has made some changes, cut some parts, removed the small portion of vulgar humor which relieved the glowering doom, but in the end, it is rather fatuous.