The Variety rave (“scarcely improvable”) of the new “Macbeth,” which screened for London critics earlier this month, hit the ether seconds after the conclusion of Saturday morning’s Cannes festival press screening. Respectful applause greeted the end credits at Cannes, along with a few hearty boos. There you have it: adoration, disdain and the vast battleground in between, all in a single nano-second of a news cycle.
Some impressions. Based on Australian director Justin Kurzel’s approach to Shakespeare, particularly the battle scenes kept largely offstage in the theater, it’s no surprise Kurzel’s next project is “Assassin’s Creed” with his “Macbeth” costars Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard. If you’ve seen “300,” already you have a notion of the floating, slow-motion blood globules and fast/slow/fast/slow/fast film speeds Kurzel deploys in “Macbeth.” Some of it’s sharp and effective; a lot of it’s slick and gamer-friendly to a fault.
The text adaptation of Shakespeare’s shortest tragedy is quite efficient, paring away many characters and lines of action to make room for Kurzel’s visual preoccupations. In a prologue we witness a young boy, a victim of the clan war, dead on the ground; Fassbender’s Macbeth places scales on his eyes. This Macbeth is a warrior (of course), and a willing partner in Lady Macbeth’s murderous aspirations (of course). But in the post-screening press conference the actors and Kurzel talked about the Macbeths as grieving parents trying to reconnect in some way, while getting ahead politically.
Fassbender noted that Cotillard’s performance was shot through with “loneliness.” Kurzel’s wintertime locations shooting outdoors, in Scotland, accentuated the vastness of the surroundings.
On first viewing it’s curiously frustrating, this movie. Kurzel came to prominence with his 2011 drama “The Snowtown Murders” and he has an eye, and considerable compositional talent. Individual images in his “Macbeth” carry real impact, such as the overhead shot near the end of Macbeth and Macduff, both bloody messes, kneeling, as the army marches straight past them on the way to Scotland’s uncertain future.
But Kurzel doesn’t know what to do with the scenes where people talk. Fassbender may have had a good, even great Macbeth in him, but he’s been encouraged or allowed to deliver every line in a monotonal, whispery burr, and the rhythms of the exchanges go slack at odd places. Cotillard and Fassbender remain as isolated in their scenes together as they do in actual isolation.
This is an infernally difficult play to activate, despite its perpetual revival. Kurzel’s solution, to mixed results, is to lay on with crimson and orange color saturations, the bone-crunching and this-knob-goes-to-11 sound effects. By the time Fassbender actually says the famous line “Lay on, Macduff,” you think: Lay off! The movie’s been laying on the whole time.
Still, it has its champions, and U.S. audiences can judge for themselves when the Weinstein Company lays it on for general release later this year. Fassbender, for the record, cited his favorite “Macbeth” on film as Kurosawa’s “Throne of Blood.” (Correct answer.) And when asked what the best and the worst things about shooting in Scotland, he replied: “Whiskey, and whiskey.”
The awards ceremony for the 68th annual Festival du Cannes is Sunday evening. I doubt very much “Macbeth” will be cited for anything Sunday night. In serious contention for the top three awards Sunday? I’d guess Todd Haynes’ “Carol”; Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s “The Assassin”; “Son of Saul” by Laszlo Nemes; the Yorgos Lanthimos black comedy “The Lobster”; and “Mountains May Depart” by Jia Zhang-ke. I’m thinking Cate Blanchett, best actress, for “Carol” and Tim Roth, best actor, for “Chronic.”
And that’s enough random speculation for a Saturday.
