You cannot really blame Macbeth for the story. Shakespeare had that part fairly well covered four centuries before Justin Kurzel arrived with cameras, smoke machines and what appears to be most of Scotland’s available mud.
The 2015 film goes hard at the material from the opening battle. Swords collide in slow motion, bodies hit the ground, dust and blood hang in the air and Michael Fassbender’s Macbeth looks as though he has already been living with war for far too long. If you have ever wanted Shakespeare pushed towards the visual territory of Game of Thrones, Kurzel is very happy to oblige.
I was entirely here for the idea. Big-screen Macbeth should have some weight to it. The trouble is that this version sometimes becomes so interested in the weight that the play underneath it struggles to move.
The pacing is heavy. Not because nothing happens, but because scenes are allowed to sit in smoke, silence and portent for so long that the rhythm of the language can get buried beneath the production. Macbeth is already full of dread. Kurzel occasionally seems determined to add another layer just in case we missed it.
Our biggest practical problem was the sound mix. Watching on 5.1 surround, dialogue that should cut straight through a scene was sometimes muffled beneath wind, drums, battle noise and atmosphere. More than once the subtitles went on, which is not ideal when the film is adapting a play whose words are rather important. That is a very specific irritation, but it changed the experience. We know the play. If we are still reaching for subtitles to work out what somebody just said, the swords are winning a fight they probably should not be in. Sean Harris nearly steals Scotland
Michael Fassbender’s Macbeth is not bad, but he never quite clicked for us. There is menace in the performance and he certainly looks like a man being hollowed out by ambition and violence, yet the delivery can feel rigid. Some lines sound performed rather than spoken, which creates distance exactly when Macbeth’s collapse ought to be pulling us closer.
Sean Harris has the opposite effect as Macduff. There is something immediate about him. The grief, anger and eventual confrontation with Macbeth feel less arranged, and whenever Harris enters the story the film suddenly seems to have a pulse beneath all that ash.
Marion Cotillard takes Lady Macbeth in a quieter direction than the role sometimes receives. She is not constantly prowling around Macbeth barking ambition into his ear. Her pressure is softer, almost intimate, which makes the early manipulation more believable between husband and wife.
That restraint pays off later. The sleepwalking scene does not need Cotillard to attack the famous words. She looks exhausted by what has happened, as though the consequences have finally become too large to keep outside the room. It is one of the film’s better choices. Paddy Considine gives Banquo a warmth that makes his relationship with Macbeth useful before everything falls apart, while David Thewlis and David Hayman bring the sort of faces that look entirely comfortable in a wet, miserable medieval Scotland. The supporting cast is strong enough that the film never feels short of actors capable of handling the language.
Visually, there is plenty to admire. Kurzel and cinematographer Adam Arkapaw fill the screen with fog, fire, empty ground and people emerging from smoke. The final stretches turn violently orange, making the landscape look less like somewhere anyone lives and more like the world has caught fire around Macbeth.
It is beautiful in a brutal sort of way, but this is also where our frustration sits. There are moments when the film feels more concerned with producing another remarkable image than allowing the scene to breathe normally. Macbeth can become a parade of compositions: armour in mist, flames behind silhouettes, faces half-lost in shadow.
One addition we do really like is the child among the Weird Sisters. The witches do not need elaborate effects because their calmness is unsettling enough, and putting a child within the group makes them stranger without making them louder. They feel less like supernatural entertainers arriving to perform prophecy and more like something Macbeth has stumbled across that was already waiting for him. That sense of inevitability suits the story. From the moment the prophecy takes hold, the film feels as though everyone is walking towards an ending that has already happened somewhere ahead of them. Unfortunately, atmosphere cannot solve every problem. The slower stretches drag, Fassbender never completely convinces us in the central role and the sound mix repeatedly fights the dialogue. Those are significant issues when the central attraction is Macbeth rather than simply medieval warfare inspired by Macbeth.
We still admire the attempt. Kurzel did not make a safe school-text adaptation with tidy rooms and actors politely waiting for their cue. This Macbeth is filthy, violent and visually aggressive. When it works, the battlefields, witches and fire give the play real physical danger.
When it does not, all that smoke starts getting between us and Shakespeare.
If the idea of Macbeth with a Thrones-like edge appeals, there is enough here to make the watch worthwhile. Sean Harris is excellent, Cotillard finds an interesting route through Lady Macbeth and several images deserve to be seen on a large screen. Just keep the subtitles nearby. In our case, the Bard occasionally needed technical support.
