Steam rises from the scorched earth in Justin Kurzel’s “Macbeth,” a fiery hellscape that transforms the highlands of Scotland into an otherworldly milieu.
The movie is brutally violent and painstakingly composed — with the filmmaker using extreme slow-motion and other optical tricks to emphasize the grimness, while setting his actors as specs against the vast and troubled landscape.
The visual approach evokes the essence of this story in the marrow of the picture; it’s an uncompromising study of a man driven by fanatical delusions and very human insecurities to commit heinous crimes, rendered against the sort of primal landscape that might well facilitate the worst in us.
Of course, the merit of any Shakespearean adaptation rests heavily on its actors, and in Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard, Kurzel has found leads well suited to the conflicts inherent in the narrative.
Fassbender plays the eponymous general-turned-king with the sort of raw, warrior quality one expects to find out of the star of an epic like “Braveheart” rather than a Shakespearean tragedy.
Yet, there is a marked contrast between the actor’s dashing, action hero exterior and the inner turmoil that spills forth in hushed tones as the character succumbs to his throne.
Cotillard offers a subtle take on the scheming Lady Macbeth that emphasizes the conflicted nature at the heart of even the most villainous of characters.
She cajoles Macbeth to murder through her words, of course, but also through the veneer of patience and maturity when he is tempestuous and uncertain. Her “damned spot” soliloquy is hushed, delivered on the floor of a chapel.
In the contrast between these fresh and thoughtful performances and the horrors that surround them — the unforgiving wasteland that is Macbeth’s universe — Kurzel evokes the “sound and fury” of life along with intrinsic truths about the frailty of existence.
In his hands, this most iconic of tragedies resonates once more.
