REVIEW

Out in Theaters: ‘MACBETH’

Name: Macbeth review
Item: Macbeth
Rating: 3
Author: Matt Oakes

By Matt Oakes · December 10, 2015

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Macbeth, an extremely well-made adaptation of one of Shakespeare’s most revered tragedies, boasts inspired cinematography and voracious performances though is unlikely to win over anyone who’s not already a ravenous student of the Bard’s distinctly tricky prose. The film from director Justin Kurzel (The Snowtown Murders) is Shakespeare for Shakespeare buffs, one that – not unlike The Snowtown Murders – will inevitably shed casual viewers for the sheer indecipherableness of its composition.

It doesn’t help that most of Macbeth is spoken in hushed voices then poured over thick Scottish accents and served up like a drunkard stammering out the alphabet backwards. The result will swallow up anyone without a background in theater or poetry or United Kingdom accents in an admitted smog of confusion but leave them with a certifiable smorgasbord of stunning visuals and nonetheless captivating performances to help them make it through, all of which makes dissecting Macbeth quite a conundrum.

That is to say, it’s a challenge to parse out responsibility here. And seeing that the point of any kind of film criticism is to dissect the material through your particular subjective lens while also speaking to the truth, or objectivity, of the product’s quality, there is a bit of a disconnect between my unbiased reception of Macbeth and my duty to act as a biased, and therefore imperfect, recommendation engine. My meaning is that on the one hand, Macbeth is a completely admirable effort; its performances are rich, the directorial execution is spot on and Adam Arkapaw‘s cinematography is dreamlike, almost painterly in a post-modernism meets heavy metal way. And yet, I still found myself lost without a torch in the indecipherable miasma of Scottish Shakespeare.

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And while the fault is not on the filmmaker for pulling off a totally rock-solid adaptation of a notably challenging work, nor do I believe that the vast majority of audiences, US or otherwise, will truly find themselves able to follow along with the whirlwind of shaken cadences and robust lexemes. Surely, there will be a minority touting this as a work of brilliance (and again, technically, it is very, very strong) but it feels like a bit of a emperor’s new clothes situation where everyone wants to pretend that they got it so that they look like the smartest student in the class. That’s not to say that Shakespeare is a naked king but anyone able to follow each and every word of Macbeth must rank higher on IQ tests than I (and have UK roots.)

This isn’t a problem that’s unique to Macbeth. Rather, this is a challenge that all adaptations of Shakespeare’s works face. However the disconnect seems almost more exaggerated in Macbeth (again, those Scottish accents do not help). I’ve always been one to believe that you need a background in a Shakespeare’s productions in order to comprehend any film version of them but I guess my “Macbeth” was a bit rustier than I thought. I got the broad strokes but boy did I feel like I missed a lot of trees in that forest.

From a performance perspective, Michael Fassbender is hypnotic as the eponymous OG harbinger of regicide. Kurzel manages to develop him outside of his prose alone in some stunning battle sequences that reinvigorate the artistry of slow motion. For a Shakespeare flick, Macbeth contains some of the most gorgeous action choreography of the year. And for her part, Marion Cotillard wails as Lady Macbeth. As if she still needs to prove how consummately excellent she is, Cotillard tacks on some more buzz scenes to her flashy resume and gets away with claiming the film’s most coherent (and therefore effective) monologues. Her chemistry with Fassbender is somewhat slight though the pretender king and queen are each so momentous on their own that it really matters for naught.

CONCLUSION: ‘Macbeth‘ is Shakespeare for Shakespeare nerds. Technically elite across the board (stunning performances, cinematography and even fight sequences) but the combination of thick Scottish accents and whispered Shakespeare prose left me frustrated and racing to catch up. ‘Tis a handsome feature that inspires loads of admiration but ranks low in terms of its entertainment value due to its relative inaccessibility. Casual viewers need not apply.