Justin Kurzel (2015)
How many children had Lady Macbeth? The question posed in the title of L C Knights’s famous essay of 1933[1], in which Knights mocked critical approaches that sought to analyse Shakespeare’s characters as one might analyse the characters in a modern naturalistic drama or novel, is answered immediately in Justin Kurzel’s film of Macbeth. A child’s funeral is taking place; the grieving parents are the title character and his wife. Any viewer already familiar with Shakespeare’s play will know that Macbeth has no heirs. To that extent, this funeral scene is superfluous backstory on the Macbeths; it also suggests the kind of treatment that L C Knights believed had no place in Shakespearean literary criticism. Perhaps the couple’s bereavement explains what they get up to next; perhaps the overwhelming trauma of losing their only child triggered psychological disturbance that caused the murders for which the Macbeths are responsible? It’s a relief that this silly implication is never followed up by Justin Kurzel – but that’s only because, like so much else in this Macbeth, the opening scene is there only for instant and transitory effect.
I realise that, when you’re working on a production that cost upwards of $15m, commercial pressures oblige you to go beyond filmed Shakespeare into making a film out of Shakespeare. The landscape created by Kurzel, his production designer Fiona Crombie and his cinematographer Adam Arkapaw is remarkable to look at – simultaneously blasted and ardent. (The film was shot mainly in Northumberland and on the Isle of Skye.) For all I know, Jacqueline Durran’s costumes and the military paraphernalia may be spot on for eleventh-century Scotland. But Kurzel’s priorities are far removed from the themes of the play: I came to feel he was merely using Shakespeare as a pretext for the creation of grandiose, often obvious images and, especially, for scenes of warfare and violence. As a result, the film is remarkably boring. If the words ‘Macbeth does murder sleep’ are spoken, I didn’t hear them (see below); but Justin Kurzel, in murdering Macbeth, has made it soporific. I was glad when Birnam Wood came to Dunsinane, assuming the movie was into the final furlong, but I was wrong: the final showdown between Macbeth and Macduff is gruesomely protracted. (Although it’s also gory to an almost comical degree – there are moments here that bring to mind the bloodshed in Monty Python and the Holy Grail.) The brutal ‘realism’ of Kurzel’s staging of the killings doesn’t extend to his rendering them in immediately believable terms: when Duncan is stabbed, the assassin’s position in relation to his victim makes Macbeth too physically vulnerable; in the climax, Macbeth capitulates to Macduff just when he’s perfectly placed to finish off his nemesis.
The screenplay, credited to Jacob Koskoff, Michael Lesslie and Todd Louiso, cuts many of Shakespeare’s lines, and fair enough: this is inevitable in a film with a running time of less than two hours. What’s unacceptable is that much of what remains of the text is inaudible – especially from the two leads. Michael Fassbender is a disappointingly limited Macbeth although it may not be the actor’s fault when he gives a scene an empty surprise twist. In other words, he plays a moment in a way that you (a) didn’t expect and (b) realise, after the initial impact of the surprise, doesn’t make sense. (A bizarre example of this occurs when Lady Macbeth has died: her husband takes her corpse in his arms, and addresses it with a detached curiosity that drifts into an almost spiteful pleasure – as if to say: ‘You’re dead but I’m not!’) Marion Cotillard is somewhat more interesting but she seems prematurely vulnerable – impatient for Lady Macbeth’s disintegration. While Cotillard maintains an English accent with some effort, I think Fassbender intends a Scottish one – though he doesn’t manage it as well as some others.
The better work is in supporting roles: David Thewlis as Duncan (Thewlis is suddenly ubiquitous – not that I’m complaining); Sean Harris as Macduff. Harris seems to have taken to heart the complaints about his inaudibility in the BBC’s unhappy dramatisation of Jamaica Inn last year: he speaks clearly and is the most facially expressive performer in the film. This is in spite of the fact that, like several others in the cast, Harris appears to have been told by Justin Kurzel to convey impassionedness by grasping a fellow actor’s head, holding it an inch away from his own, placing his thumbs on the sides of the other actor’s face, and emoting for all he’s worth. In contrast, if I hadn’t known beforehand that Paddy Considine was playing Banquo, I’m not sure I’d have recognised him – it’s hard to see his face as well as to make out what he’s saying. The cast also includes some actual Scots, like David Hayman (Lennox), Hilton McRae (Menteith) and Maurice Roëves (Macdonwald). The weird sisters are effectively played by Seylan Baxter, Lynn Kennedy, Kayla Fallon and Amber Rissmann. (I didn’t miscount: there are four of them, eventually anyway.)
5 October 2015
[1] The essay’s full title is How Many Children Had Lady Macbeth? An Essay in the Theory and Practice of Shakespeare Criticism.
