#Mac beth movie full#

The funeral that opens the film is pure invention, but we do know from ShakespeareвЂ™s text that theyвЂ™ve lost a child as Lady Macbeth talks of having вЂњgiven suck.вЂќ For a play so concerned with fathers, sons, and lineage, itвЂ™s not an unreasonable leap. Macbeth (Michael Fassbender) and Lady Macbeth (Marion Cotillard) are the first two characters we meet, as grieving parents at their childвЂ™s funeral, even though Lady Macbeth isnвЂ™t even mentioned in the text until late in Act I. Not only are they the Shakespearean romantic power couple, theyвЂ™re also a team. The emphasis on physicality over language is especially evident in how Kurzel portrays the Macbeths. Facial expressions and physicality serve as a substitute for dialogue. The line readings are oblivious to metre. ThereвЂ™s no effort made to stress certain words, or to change pitch for emphasis and elucidation. In KurzelвЂ™s Macbeth, the actors sound as if theyвЂ™re just reading their lines. Ian McKellenвЂ™s Richard III, BranaghвЂ™s Benedick, and Ralph FiennesвЂ™ Coriolanus were also first perfected through hundreds of performances on stage. Branagh spent a year on stage perfecting his Henry V at the RSC before tackling the part on film. When director Thea Sharrock was preparing Tom Hiddleston for the role of Henry V, she made him repeat the set speeches over and over and over again until every word was clear. The intent seems to be for naturalistic performances, rather than a highfalutin theatrical style.Д«ut delivering Shakespearean dialogue in a way that seems naturalistic requires intense close textual reading and practice - which is clearly missing from this film. ItвЂ™s hard to reconcile with the fact that they spent months rehearsing. But thereвЂ™s little thought put into how staging scenes could help illuminate individual lines, and even less thought put into how he has the actors speak. Much of the power of BanquoвЂ™s (a quietly moving Paddy Considine) presence is felt in the closeups of his disapproving looks after DuncanвЂ™s murder, puzzling out if Macbeth is connected. His direction is all about mood and creating intimacy with the characters through closeups. Kurzel has backed himself into a corner, leaving no other option than to make this a world of doom and gloom from the start rather than a world that gradually darkens.ДЄlthough Kurzel is a master at setting the tone for individual scenes, thereвЂ™s no discernible arc within each scene. Yet the Weird Sisters ignore the nursery rhyme rhythms of their lines and Kurzel has cut most of the scenes of regular verse needed for contrast. Shakespeare gradually builds a sense of foreboding over many scenes by manipulating the metre of the text: he juxtaposes regular iambic pentameter verse, spoken by secondary characters like the unsuspecting Duncan (David Thewlis), with the breaks in verse that signal something is rotten in the state of ScotlandДЇor instance, the Weird Sisters of the text speak in the rapid, jarring trochaic tetrameter - the rhythmic opposite of the BardвЂ™s usual iambic pentameter.

#Mac beth movie full#

KurzelвЂ™s Medieval Scotland is a harsh, hard world from the outset, full of grey clouds, damp weather, and fog. The emphasis on tone over text leads to an overwrought and excessively brutal production. Sometimes, these choices even contradict the information embedded in the verse. Kurzel takes his cues from the text, but he expresses his ideas about the text through images and sounds rather than through the dialogue. But what is Shakespeare without the unforgettable language? The BardвЂ™s words were his genius while his plots were recycled. The verse, in KurzelвЂ™s hands, is barely even identifiable as poetry. Instead, Kurzel relies heavily on sound mixing and symbolic images - the whistling wind, the clashing swords, and the ghostly hooded figures - to communicate plot.

In KurzelвЂ™s Macbeth, however, the text takes a backseat. For these directors, filming Shakespeare meant setting down for posterity a performance of the play by high calibre actors, who would be impossible to assemble onstage at once. Although the whispery king of Kenneth BranaghвЂ™s Henry VВ and the uncertain, weak monarch of Rupert GooldвЂ™s Richard II would be impossible without the closeup, these films were, above all, about the text. Few film adaptations of Shakespeare embrace the possibilities of cinema as effectively as Justin KurzelвЂ™s Macbeth.