Australian filmmaker Justin Kurzel’s starts his awe-inspiring take on Shakespeare’s most violent tale of Macbeth on the battlefield on the mist-drenched Scottish heath that he stages dramatically like an epic, but bloody opera. It sets the pace for what turns out to be one of the most enthralling adaptions of the Bards work on the big screen for some years.
As Macbeth’s (Michael Fassbender) murderous plans succeed but lead onto the need to kill over and over again to secure his Throne, his paranoia turns him into a despot ruler as his madness sets in. Fassbender gives a powerful electrifying performance in a role that he really makes his own from enraging on the battlefield to the quietness of the some of the more entreating soliloquies from Shakespeare’s rich text. Marion Cotillard, a phenomenal Lady Macbeth, adds another dimension into playing one of the Bard’s toughest women and sends spine tingling shivers down one’s back with her quiet rendering of the famous sleepwalking scene which is set in the darkness of a stark chapel lit by snowflakes. As the strong almost silent power behind Macbeth she does however seem almost unhinged herself when she is forced to watch the cruel killing of Lady McDuff (Elizabeth Debicki) and her three children. The chemistry between Fassbender and Cotillard practically sizzles at times.
The play, no long bound by the restrictions of a stage, comes alive as Kurzel and his Australian crew of cinematographer Adam Arkapaw and production designer Fiona Crombie, let loose in the Scottish glens and make this a real visual treat which is positively breathtaking at times. What this helps to achieve is to make the plot line much easier for non Shakespeare aficionados to follow, and in fact makes this wonderful classic much more accessible to a wider audience without taking anything at all away from the text.