'Macbeth': Director Justin Kurzel is big on bluster and broadsword battles

Michael Fassbender's Macbeth is impressively staunch, though he has to fight a lot of sound and fury to get a word in edgewise, and Marion Cotillard's Lady Macbeth is a triumph.

|
Jonathan Olley/The Weinstein Company/AP
'Macbeth' stars Michael Fassbender (l.) and Marion Cotillard (r.).

“Macbeth” is one of Shakespeare’s most “cinematic” plays, and it has thus far received three movie adaptations of note: the Orson Welles and Roman Polanski versions and, perhaps best of all, Akira Kurosawa’s “Throne of Blood,” which dispenses with the language but has a visual poetry at times equal to the Bard’s words. (Criterion, by the way, has just issued a stunning DVD of Kurosawa’s film.) 

The latest entry is Justin Kurzel’s adaption, starring Michael Fassbender as the thane who would be king, and Marion Cotillard as Lady Macbeth. The screenplay is credited to Todd Louiso, Jacob Koskoff, and Michael Lesslie, who trimmed the play and added some dialogueless busywork. You would think Shakespeare would get top billing here, not to mention in the ads for the film. 

Kurzel is big on bluster and the clangor of slo-mo broadsword battles. Mud-caked Dark Ages vistas predominate. Fassbender has to fight all this sound and fury to get a word in edgewise, but he’s impressively staunch, though, like most Macbeths on stage and in film, his psychological complexities diminish as his bloodlust expands. Marion Cotillard’s Lady Macbeth, however, is a triumph. She seems transfixed by her own capacity for evil, and her mad scene is one of the most unhistrionic, and therefore spookiest, ever filmed. Grade: B (Rated R for strong violence and brief sexuality) 

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to 'Macbeth': Director Justin Kurzel is big on bluster and broadsword battles
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/Movies/2015/1204/Macbeth-Director-Justin-Kurzel-is-big-on-bluster-and-broadsword-battles
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe