The Tragedy of Macbeth: Terrific style, flawed substance

The Tragedy of Macbeth (2021) • View trailer

Three stars (out of five). Rated R, for violence

Available via: Apple TV+

By Derrick Bang

Shakespeare’s plays have been modified, mutated and mangled in all manner of wild, wonderful and wacky ways, on the stage and screen: modern settings, cross-gender casting, larkish animation and much, much more.

 

Double, double, toil and trouble; fire burn and cauldron bubble: Macbeth (Denzel
Washington) is about to learn that an apparently promising prophecy carries
nasty consequences.

(It sometimes seems unusual when a faithful adaptation arrives, although 1996’s Twelfth Night and several sumptuous Kenneth Branagh entries come to mind.)

Even by the unusual standards of some that have come before, director/scripter Joel Coen’s Tragedy of Macbeth is quite outré.

 

The film’s look is simultaneously gorgeous and disorienting. Stefan Dechant’s eye-popping production design is an opulent blend of 1920s German Expressionism and imposing Gothic sensibilities, saturated with a 1950s film noir atmosphere courtesy of Bruno Delbonnel’s gorgeous monochrome cinematography. Buildings and individual rooms have impossibly distant ceilings, with quirkily geometric windows that cast striking lights and shadows.

 

The result is unsettling and even hallucinatory: quite apt, given the nature of this grim, blood-drenched story.

 

Carter Burwell’s moody, often ominous orchestral score similarly adds much to the film’s macabre tone.

 

Casting is intriguing; Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand are much too old for the roles of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, although their advanced years do further emphasize their characters’ frustration over having failed to produce an heir.

 

There’s also the matter of Coen’s bold decision to considerably enhance the role of Ross, generally a minor supporting character, but — as superbly played here by Alex Hassell — transformed into a Satanic key player, trickster figure and master manipulator. He frankly blows Washington and McDormand off the screen.

 

The story begins as Scottish generals Macbeth, his good friend Banquo (Bertie Carvel) and their army have successfully defeated the allied forces of Ireland and Norway. En route to rejoining King Duncan (Brendan Gleeson), Macbeth and Banquo wander onto an ominous heath and encounter three witches.

 

All three of these supernatural beings do — or sometimes don’t — inhabit the single body of actress Kathryn Hunter, whose contortionist abilities and feral malevolence are extremely unsettling. She may be the creepiest witch ever brought to the screen, and her varying appearances are quite creative: most strikingly, a single body with two reflections in a pool of water, thus becoming three “selves.”

Macbeth: Macawful

Macbeth (2015) • View trailer 
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.

Much Ado About Nothing: A droll something

Much Ado About Nothing (2012) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rating: PG-13, for sensuality, subtle sexual candor and fleeting drug use
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 6.21.13

Fred and Wesley finally got back together, which is pretty cool.

And while the circumstances are rather unusual, they’re no less delightful.

An eavesdropping Beatrice (Amy Acker, foreground) is astonished to overhear details
about how Benedick — elsewhere in the estate — has long adored her ... astonished
because it seems that she and Benedick do nothing but snipe at each other. Ah, but
Beatrice doesn't realize that Hero (Jillian Morgese, center) and the maid are fully aware
that they're being overheard, and are discussing "details" that have been exaggerated
for Beatrice's benefit.

Most filmmakers, after completing principal photography on a massive, gazillion-dollar project, unwind prior to the next step — assembling the director’s cut — by taking calm vacations ...  anything but film-related.

Joss Whedon isn’t most people. Prior to putting the finishing touches on The Avengers — last year’s wildly successful superhero summit meeting — he filled the in-between time by staging an intimate, micro-budget movie at his own Los Angeles home. And, as genre geeks know, when Whedon mounts such a project, he always engages the close friends who’ve become one of Hollywood’s most loyal repertoire companies.

In this case, a 12-day shoot (!) yielded one of the most unusual interpretations of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing ever to hit cinema screens. Lensed in glorious, mood-enhancing black-and-white by cinematographer Jay Hunter, this modern-dress staging nonetheless employs the Bard’s original dialogue — condensed and occasionally tweaked by Whedon — and features faces well-recognized from his various television projects.

Yes, kids; that means Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Firefly and Dollhouse.

Thus, my somewhat cryptic opening sentence can be explained by the casting of Alexis Denisof and Amy Acker — Wesley Wyndam-Price and Winifred “Fred” Burke, respectively, on Angel — as Benedick and Beatrice.

Lest you roll eyebrows over the reflexive accusation that Whedon has unleashed a self-indulgent vanity production, well, yes, that’s certainly true. But who can complain, when the results are this entertaining?

To be sure, the initial disconnect is jarring. The setting, clothing and technology clearly are 21st century, which is at odds with the flowery Shakespearean dialogue. The acting style throughout is a bit ostentatious and overly mannered, the performers occasionally mugging for the camera the way a stage actor would pause for a laugh from the audience.

But that “settling in” period can be true of any Shakespeare production, even those that are rigorously authentic. Fifteen or 20 minutes into this film, everything starts to look and sound natural, at which point you’ll simply enjoy the richly contrived romantic entanglements present in one of Shakespeare’s most appealing comedies.