Thoughts on Macbeth
Forgive the hurried nature of this, I've only just returned from the cinema, and my mind is full of Scorpions so I need to jot this all down quickly.
Much like its bloodied protagonist, Justin Kerzal‘s adaptation of Macbeth waits until late in the day to reveal its true self. Throughout its duration it has diminished the role of the supernatural, or at least reduced its visual splendour; employing it in an earthly, grounded fashion. Blood, and indeed the sky have run red, but rarely in a manner divorced from physical reality; Macbeth is drenched in it because it flows through his veins, not because the heavens have poured it upon him. This is a version where the mystical is lodged firmly within the elemental. Where the dirt, wind and fire of Scotland contain within them enough fury and power to render the need for the celestial as null. However in its dying moments it finally cedes some ground to the Gothic heart that beats at the centre of the Scottish play, and abandons the comforting ending used so often in film and theatre alike, to instead herald not the resumption of order, but of chaos.
I will not divulge any more than that for fear of diluting the experience for fresh eyes, but this adaptation remains a complex fusion of politics in a microcosm, and tragedy writ large. The former becomes more effective as it moves beyond the pomp and procedure Shakespeare’s court scenes can easily be presented as, and instead pulls it firmly within the personal; with the pictures many public scenes as striking as the soliloquy’s which so often dominate the focus of a director’s time and focus. Banquo’s haunting melds the farcical with an uncomfortable display of malice, and the leading couples final scene is both oddly tender and simultaneously morbid.
This is not to say the plays many famed one-handers are squandered by its cast. Fassbender and Cotillard present all their key character moments with a restrained intensity one would expect of such mercurial presences, and whilst one looks a hell of a lot more Gaelic than the other (I’ll leave it to you to decipher which), both handle the centre of the screen with ease, assisted by a director who’s not afraid to cut such scenes frequently or rarely to attain the required effect.
Shakespeare’s dialogue here of course remains unchanged, but the visual elements employed always ensure these moments emphasise the absence lingering in the lives of the two leads, with the almost spectral presence of their lost children (the most fantastical element of the film) driving them throughout, a gaping wound that no amount of sovereign power can heal. The use of the couples missing offspring is hardly uncommon, but I cannot recall an on-screen adaptation which has placed them more front-and-centre, nor indeed one which has portrayed the marriage that survives them as so stable and warm before murder and paranoia corrupt its foundations. Both Lady Macbeth and her husband seem to share a strong bond that reaches beyond a mere lust for power, and one of the wisest choices made here is to highlight the tragedy of the Lady going mad not from the guilt of the murder, but out of the grief of watching what the act has done to her husband. The ‘spot’ she wishes to ‘out’ here is not so much blood that cannot be removed, but a transformation that cannot be undone.
Her final fate is somewhat odd however. It succeeds in capturing the understated aura of the text, but without the brutal violence suggested by it. The film grants her a greater role perhaps, but the nature of her end feels like it may have been abandoned on the cutting room floor. That is not to say that the film is rushed, or indeed too long for that matter; it comfortably navigates the waters of one of Shakespeare’s shorter tragedies, and manages to do so with remarkably little staggering, with many sequences blending into and crossing over each other, the five act structure barely visible. The score squeals and rattles with the use of modern instrumentation well disguised beneath the thunder of drums and pipes. It matches the visual punch of the battle scenes which alternate between gory confusion and a majestic grandeur, crafting the links between the stories beginning and inevitable end with the image of Macbeth looking beyond the here and now, his eye reaching dangerously towards something more that seems always to be luring him into entrapment, the presence and power of the witches displayed purely through noise and position, nothing more. But of course as I said at the start, this is not the end. That is the unique element I came away with in the forefront of my mind. Macbeth’s story, his life, is over, but the seeds planted by witches are yet to fully bear their fruit, and whatever justice or madness will come with them. Malcolm has always been the plays dullest figure, but this is the first time I've seen a film suggest he is not its end.
It is not the end.
