One star. Rated R, for strong violence and fleeting sexuality
By Derrick Bang
This is Shakespeare; I knew the
guy had to die eventually.
Trouble is, even his death seemed
to take forever. Like everything else in this dreadful film.
 |
| Fair is foul, and foul is fair ... except that everything about this turkey is foul, including any sense of an actual relationship between Macbeth (Michael Fassbender) and his wife (Marion Cotillard). |
I’ve seen Macbeth at least a dozen times on stage, TV and the big screen,
with the mad king played by the likes of Orson Welles, Jon Finch, Sean Connery
(believe it or not, back in 1961) and Ian McKellen, the latter a Royal
Shakespeare Company production with Judi Dench as Lady Macbeth (definitely a
high point, in productions of “the Scottish play”).
Goodness, I’ve even watched Sam
Worthington lumber about in a contemporary update of the play, set amidst
criminal gangs in Melbourne (far from a high point).
Do a title search on Macbeth at the Internet Movie Database,
and you’ll come up with 95 matches, with adaptations clocking in from — among
other countries — Japan, Australia, Russia and India.
Look far and wide, though, and
you’ll not find a big-screen Macbeth
that is worse than what director Justin Kurzel has unleashed this holiday
season. Rarely has this play — or any other — been presented with such
plodding, ponderous dreariness, its crackling dialog reduced to monotonous
speeches mumbled by actors apparently instructed to utter every line with a
complete lack of involvement.
This is Shakespeare, for
goodness’ sake; impassioned monologues and overwrought performances are de rigueur. Instead, we get an entire
cast that behaves like extras from a George Romero zombie movie, which is to
say the slow, shambling walking dead, marked by dull, vacant expressions.
Michael Fassbender and Marion
Cotillard are exceptional actors; their Macbeth and Lady Macbeth should have
leaped ferociously from the screen. Instead, for reasons known only to Kurzel,
they hunch, cower and sulk, often standing motionless and staring into vacuous
nothing, muttering their lines so softly, and with such little energy, that we
often can’t even hear what they’re saying.
Which, perversely, could be a
blessing. Students of Shakespeare will be appalled by the way scripters Jacob
Koskoff, Michael Lesslie and Todd Louiso have butchered this play, committing
artistic murders far more heinous than any of Macbeth’s on-screen
blood-letting. Motivation and (ir)rational thought are abandoned, with far too
many key events occurring seemingly at random.
There’s no reason to discuss any
of the so-called acting in this film, because such craft is entirely absent.
Given the dull, washed out cinematography, along with the grime that so
frequently coats the faces of all these men, it’s even difficult to distinguish
one key character from another. It’s not like any of them say or do anything to
make themselves identifiably different people.
Kurzel’s directorial vision
throughout remains confined to static establishing shots and relentlessly tight
close-ups on actors doing nothing. Adam Arkapaw’s cinematography is as
colorless and washed-out as the performances framed in his lens. Editor Chris
Dickens obviously got paid for doing nothing, because this film is utterly
paceless.
Come to think of it, Kurzel may
be a terrible filmmaker — his only previous feature credit being 2011’s grimly
unpalatable The Snowtown Murders —
but he probably deserves a Nobel Prize in physics. He has figured out how to
stretch time, by making a 113-minute movie last three years (maybe four).
He has taken the “motion” out of
motion pictures.
His Macbeth isn’t merely boring. It’s lifeless, vapid and interminably
sluggish to a degree that defies description. Viewers who don’t fall asleep are
to be congratulated; those who endure without some sort of chemical stimulant
should receive a medal. Patrons fled from a recent preview screening; they were
the smart ones.
I’m certain many of the hold-outs
remained because they genuinely couldn’t believe that things wouldn’t
eventually pick up, at the very least in the final act. Such optimists were
doomed to disappointment.
The story, set in the Middle
Ages, is fairly simple for a Shakespearean tragedy. Following a successful
battle fought on behalf of Scottish King Duncan (David Thewlis), Macbeth and
fellow soldier Banquo (Paddy Considine) encounter three women scavenging among
the slain men. These actually are witches, not that this is made clear, and
they prophesize that Macbeth will become king, while Banquo will be the father
of future kings.
Back at Macbeth’s home in
Inverness, the scheming Lady Macbeth greets this news with delight, as it spurs
a plot to hasten the process, by having her husband kill Duncan during an
upcoming visit. At least, that’s the way it’s supposed to play out, but
Cotillard’s behavior is worlds removed from “scheming”; she shambles about in
the same stupor as everybody else in this wretched movie, acting far more like
a battered wife than a master manipulator.
Ahem. Anyway...
Macbeth does the dirty deed, but
is seen by the king’s son, Malcolm (Jack Reynor), who successfully flees. His
departure plants the seed of paranoia in Macbeth’s vile brain; such fears
sprout more vigorously when he realizes that Banquo — having been present for
the prophecies — is suspicious. Worse yet, former friend and colleague Macduff
(Sean Harris) has his own doubts.
Despite being crowned the new
king and taking up residence at the royal seat at Dunsinane, the increasingly
depraved Macbeth becomes determined to kill all of his perceived enemies and
their families. Plenty of blood flows, often in the sort of artsy-fartsy slow
motion that director Zack Snyder employed throughout 300 and its sequel. The demented king’s fury knows no bounds, and
his wrath expands to include wives and children. (Let’s be grateful that Kurzel
remains restrained with the latter.)
But Macbeth’s minions fail to
kill Banquo’s young son Fleance (Lochlann Harris), who escapes into nearby
Birnam Wood: a detail that further enhances the new king’s obsessions and
mounting terror.
Lady Macbeth, meanwhile, has
become consumed by guilt and driven mad ... not that we can tell, because
Cotillard’s expressions and behavior don’t change a jot. The actress
nonetheless delivers the film’s one and only heartfelt speech — credit where
due — just prior to an apparently spontaneous death.
No doubt Cotillard decided that
she’d had enough of this infernal mess, and that a quick death scene was the
fastest way out.
Cue yet another grisly
battlefield melee outside Dunsinane, where Macbeth finally meets his true
destiny ... although you’ll need very
sharp ears to discern the tricky manner in which our deranged king does not die “by the hand of any man born of
a woman.”
As the dust settles and the
survivors speechify lifelessly about nothing in particular, Kurzel (finally!)
uncorks an unexpectedly powerful final scene: Young Fleance appears on the
battlefield, wrenches Macbeth’s war sword from the dead king’s hands, and
retreats back into the smoke from the burning Birnam Wood.
We’re left with the tantalizing
thought of the second prophecy: that Banquo, death notwithstanding, is destined
to be the father of future kings.
Too little, much too late: a shame
that Kurzel and his inept screenwriters couldn’t have managed that level of
imaginative subtlety in the rest of their misbegotten film.
Avoid. This. One. At. All. Cost.
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