Since this could be the last time I go to the cinema for a long while I wanted to finish with a bang. Something big and dramatic. This new Macbeth fits the bill. The opening battle, set in a cold and rugged Scotland, is epic in nature but also dirty and brutal. There's occasional slow motions on Michael Fassbender as Macbeth, grimly slaying his enemies, with not a word spoken.
For me the problems started when they began talking. They've not updated the original Shakespeare, and it's quite hard to follow. I imagine if you saw the text written down you could work it out, but it's often quite hard to process in real time, especially as a lot of the dialogue is delivered as voice over or through a scraggly beard. It's a bit like having English as your second language - you can understand what they're saying, but only if you concentrate. Sometimes you'll miss most of a sentence and rely on understanding one or two key words only. At one point I started daydreaming and realised I hadn't understood anything for the last minute, and was just watching Fassbender crawl across the floor grinning maniacally.
Thankfully the plot is fairly straightforward. Macbeth kills the old king, becomes king himself, then feels guilty about it. What is trickier, and I didn't actually get this until reading another review, is that director Justin Kurzel (soon to release Assassin's Creed) has added a twist, and Macbeth's children now feature. So that explains the child with stones in his eyes at the start.
Although I enjoyed the story, because of the effort required to focus I've never felt closer to falling asleep in a movie. Some of it is OK, such as when Macbeth seeks out the three witches he then meets someone else on the road: "Saw you not the Weird Sisters?" he asks. You can understand that and get a nice sense of olde-worldiness. But some of the rest of it, which I can't give an example of because I don't know what they were saying, didn't make sense to me.
The production had a very authentic feel. When Macbeth's reinforcements arrive at the start, they really are only children, including possibly another Macbeth son, though I'm not sure. This alleged son also speaks with a genuine Glasgow accent, which you don't hear often.
Once he becomes King Macbeth foolishly believes he's safe, because he can't be killed by man of woman born. He doesn't realise that MacDuff (Sean Harris) was untimely ripped from my mother's womb so doesn't count. Macbeth also knows he'll be safe until Birnham Wood comes to Dunsinane castle. In the play the wood comes to the castle (sort of) as the attacking soldiers strap twigs to themselves for camouflage; in the film this is adapted so instead the wood is burnt and the smoke comes to the castle. Macbeth recognises what's happening when the smoke arrives, and senses his impending doom.
In fact, almost from the moment he kills old King Duncan (David Thewlis) Macbeth is morose. He knows it's not going to work out well. There's a memorable scene when he and Lady Macbeth host a terrible dinner party, ruined by Macbeth's insistence he can see the ghost of Banquo, who he also murdered. Lady Macbeth is played by Marion Cotillard, who is a more calm and scheming counterpart to Fassbender's very expressive Macbeth.
Overall a grand film, which I think I will enjoy next time at home with the subtitles on.
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