Original Take on Macbeth - but falls short of Polanski's masterpiece

Rating: 7/10 (1 November 2015)

Prior to seeing this Macbeth, the undisputed greatest adaptation in my opinion is the Polanski/Finch version, so I use that as the benchmark to judge this version.
Where this film excels is the wonderful cinematography, though it's done at great expense of losing much of the text, too much in my opinion, and the deeper meaning of the story is lost also. Polanski never overly compromised what actually makes Shakespeare Shakespeare - the beautiful language, and to a large extent Kurzel does.
Fassbender's lack of time spent on the stage doing Shakespeare shows and he isn't always spot on with his timing of Shakespeare's Blank Verse and he lacks the mastery and elucidation that an experienced Shakespearean actor like Jon Finch had, where his crisp and cutting voice pours meaning into every word.
Whether it was lack of experience performing Shakespeare or how Fassbender/Kurzel intended it, is hard to tell, but the upshot is that Macbeth here is presented as a severally depressed man from the beginning and struggles to generate any emotion. He speaks in a constant monotone and rather mumbling way for the majority of the play. Portraying Macbeth in such a way, while original, actually defeats the deeper meaning of Macbeth, as the point really is that, at the beginning of the play, he is a perfectly happy person, has just won a great battle for his King, has good friends like Banquo and a lovely wife and castle - or tent in this adaptation! And then all this changes when he receives a prophecy by some witches and stops behaving rationally.
Often, I felt Fassbender was trying to fight against what the actual lines were to force them into his interpretation. For example, in the latter part of the play, when Fassbender's Macbeth says: "I 'gin to be aweary of the sun, And wish th' estate o' th' world were now undone." It doesn't actually carry much weight because it seems he's been aweary of the Sun since the beginning of the film. Whereas in the Polanski/Finch film, it's full of power because of the emotion he'd shown before. And many great lines and scenes were not included in this version because the emotion displayed by Macbeth wouldn't make sense with how Fassbender plays him.
The whole part of the film before and after the murder scene is pretty poor in my opinion, though I'd have to watch it again to be able to say for sure what happened, as it seemed the "dagger scene" was said in the presence of Malcolm, who seems complicit in it. But it was all rather confusing to be honest, with a massive amount of dialogue removed and other lines rearranged.
From quite early on we get another repeated problem I feel - of characters important to the play having their lines so drastically cut they often become little more than extras. Polanski got the editing down of the text spot on but Kurzel overdoes it I think. Martin Shaw's Banquo in Polanski's film is a major presence, as is his endearing relationship with Fleance, himself given enough screen time to truly become a part of the film and even a song to sing in front of the King, whereas Paddy Considine's Banquo is little more than an extra and I don't think Fleance actually says a word.
I thought Marion Cotillard was the pick of the actors. I think in part this was due to her not even attempting to do a Scottish accent while trying to get Shakespeare's lines just right, something some of the other actors struggled with - at one point Sean Harris sounded like he came from three different parts of the UK in the same sentence. Though I think he really came into his own later on in the film and gave a powerful performance.
Where I think this version came good was the last half an hour or so. The final breakdown of Lady Macbeth is a very powerful piece of film and the scene with the burial of a child at the beginning helped explain her character. I.E. The ambition she showed for Macbeth to kill Duncan comes as a replacement for the emptiness she feels no longer being a mother - and she hoped becoming Queen would fill that emptiness, though it doesn't of course.
The news of her death is done in such a way as to catch those familiar with the play off guard. "The Tomorrow and Tomorrow..." speech is delivered well by Fassbender and we perhaps see the payback for his "depressed and melancholic" Macbeth when he finally breaks down emotionally and picks up and holds her.
In many ways Fassbender's Macbeth goes on a polar opposite journey to Finch's and personally I prefer the latter and found it more powerful, and the "Towmorrow and Tomorrow..." speech as done by Finch accurately represents the journey Macbeth went on. I.E. That the prophecy by the witches created a delusion that there was a purpose to his life and that he had a destiny - this can be a good thing and inspire people to become things they otherwise wouldn't, but it's more than likely it will end up causing them to make increasingly irrational choices, which is what happens to Macbeth and he destroys all that had been good in his life, and his tyranny destroys many other lives too. And this moment where he realises that he's actually no-one special at all and life is essentially meaningless is one of the most powerful created in all of literature and spans across the centuries and still has resonances today, where many people still succumb to this notion.
The end was excellently done, with an original take on Burnham Wood coming to Dunsinane, and the finale of the fight between Macbeth and Macduff against a backdrop of fire was spectacular.