MACBETH (2015)

Genre: Drama
Director: Justin Kurzel
Cast: Michael Fassbender, Marion Cotillard, Elizabeth Debicki, Sean Harris, David Thewlis, Jack Reynor, Paddy Considine, Ross Anderson
Runtime: 1 hr 53 mins
Rating: NC-16 (Violence And Sexual Scenes)
Released By: Shaw 
Official Website: https://www.facebook.com/Macbeth.The.Movie

Opening Day: 26 November 2015

Synopsis: MACBETH is the story of a fearless warrior and inspiring leader brought low by ambition and desire. A thrilling interpretation of the dramatic realities of the times and a reimagining of what wartime must have been like for one of Shakespeare’s most famous and compelling characters, a story of all-consuming passion and ambition, set in war torn Scottish landscape.

Movie Review:

So who donned the director’s cape for the harrowingly transporting tragedy? It is none other than the Australian director Justin Kurzel who started working his magic in the Isle of Skyre in the Highlands since February 2014. And he would be the same phantom who painstakingly narrated the poetic tragedy and the briefest work of Shakespeare that could be as old as five centuries in the most elite manner. Kurzel has arranged one act after another seamlessly into a blockbuster and made it possible for the tragedy to be enjoyed as a film. Not the average silver screen for it is slated for an impressive award arrangements down the road with the production team hailing from The King’s Speech and Academy Award nominee Micheal Fassbender with its leading man and Academy Award winner Marion Cotillard as Lady Macbeth.

The film opens with a laid down shot of a baby that looks grimly forlorn and rumour mills have done overtime that Kurzel was planning that particular scene of burying a baby for a modern day thriller in which he was working on but could not get enough funding for. And Kurzel was eventually approached with Macbeth.

The scene then pummels into a bloody sequence with a minute-long war that sets the movie in motion and sucks all into an eerie trance since it is in slow-mo.

With an exhilaratingly brilliant cast line-up, Macbeth plunges right into the plot without a back story as to why the greed spiralled into a sinister desire and when the sisters of doom show up with their prophetic vows.

Fassbender's character of Macbeth effortlessly morphed from a ruthless soldier, to a cowed husband who is all attentive to the wife's malefic whispers of greed, and a senile king who witnesses the hauntings of his self-fetched success and a broken person who stands up to fight the oncoming battle with the last of his breath.

Fassbender is no stranger to the landscape of storylines that depict monumental wars. Many may not recall, but we did witness Fassbender in a certainly less prominent role in 300 where he was part of the red cape squad with well-toned torso and a blond half-up. The laudable actor of German descent, took a nosedive in manifesting into one of Shakespeare’s muse (can’t blame him for he is an Arian male) thus going for the kill. Just as the world was thrown in a fray as to if Phantom of the Opera made Gerard Butler or if Butler was made for the movie, Fassbender too is crowned to have been cut out for Macbeth. “Thou shalt be king hereafter..” These words as spoken by the third witch might ring true for Fassbender in Hollywood with Macbeth defining the sexiest curve of his career.

Marion Cotillard the face of La Vie en Rose, and the voice of Le Petit Prince’s Rose rendered a hauntingly beautiful performance as a wife, a mother and a queen filled with both avarice and a cutting conscience. Lady Macbeth plays a pivotal role where she is the sensual dark voice inside of her husband’s head who is a brilliant force to the world but a docile hubby when locked in the arms of his brainy better half. Cotillard’s French genes never betrayed her tongue that worked the Shakespearean English in the tragedy. This has to be the darkest of the many shades of Cotillard that one could have seen of the fine thespian.

The sea of faces that one is likely to recall from recent screen works are Jack Reynor (A Royal Night Out, Delivery Man), Elizabeth Debicki (The Man from U.N.C.L.E) and Sean Harris (Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation, Deliver Us From Evil) along with a fine pick of talents to embellish the plot that builds around the downfall of a king and his lady. The exciting trio from Macbeth (Kurzi, Cotillard and Fassbender) will get together and shall be witnessed again in the Assassin’s Creed in late 2016.

What allows the audiences to follow the storyline without any visual dilemma would be the costumes that fits the time frame just right and it is not at all overwhelming. Speaking of cinematography, the lighting and colours were so shrewdly used with red being the colour of blood and war that the climax seemed almost fought in Mars, the ruling planet of war.

The shortest tragedy penned by Shakespeare and directed as a big screen hit, wraps up the movie season of fall in our part of the world as a sword-edged finale where a catastrophe retold countless of times stays just as good as new. To have a play handed several centuries down made into a movie is beyond sings of praises for both the crew and cast. It will be a complete shame to dismiss an epic literature written in blood as just a literature lover’s film for it has got the latitude to be enjoyed by most adults in all aspects. For those who get intimidated by Shakespearean English need not be so, as there are subtitles. And Fassbender’s nasal voice turns on the highlander in us. Yaass!

Movie Rating:

(All hail Macbeth!)

Review by Asha Gizelle M