Physical presence over spiritual drama

Rating: Null/10 (12 October 2015)

Justin Kurtzel, the Australian director of Snowtown, tries to predetermine the Macbeths' unassuagable grief for a dead child becoming vaulting ambition, with them burying a dead child at the solemn start of the film, without embedding this in the drama. Macbeth goes onto burn later on McDuff's children and wife with his own hands. Fassbender and Cotillard are stars with charisma on screen,there are many close ups of their sexual chemistry.The Scottish landscape is a key player in this moody drama, one of harsh exteriors,foggy,cold,bleak,dank, containing the shimmer of violence. This approach is very much an invention, cutting the text to 25%.
Macbeth and Banquo encounter 3 witches after putting down the uprising against Duncan (Thewlis),who predict that Macbeth will become King. The Macbeths decide to murder Duncan. Cotillard's Lady Macbeth is played with reigned-in delicacy, invoking spirits before candle-lit pictures, she seems to be withdrawn., sidelined. The battle scenes are like a slowed-down slaughterhouse ( a nod to Welles's Chimes at Midnight?) with hack-and-slash, interspersed with a roaring tumult. The supernatural elements are down-played, so the witches are very real, appearing out of the mist or as quiet observers at a funeral or appearing at moments of crisis; similarly the spectral dagger is held by the dead boy from the battlefield, who is swallowed by the smoke. Banquo's ghost is a living presence at the banquet among the guests.
Kurtzel gets the Scottish-accented cast to mutter rather than declaim, he wants the verse to arise out of the context it is in. But what is apparent is that the meaning of the verse is lost in the fog of the film, whose visuals are superb:the camera sways, as if blown by the wind in an unstable world. If you are aware of the Welles's version or Polanki's, you will feel sorely let down. Usually verse taps into the inner lives of the characters, as it maintains the thrilling momentum, but here you get Fassbender reaching for the gestures of sociopathy, giggling, brooding,grinning. Go with a good memory of the text or you will be confused what they are saying. That could send you to sleep. The give-away is "based on Shakespeare's Macbeth",gutted.No energy,no flow,charismatic style over substance, where were the words and poetry?