If Roman Polanski’s 1971 Macbeth was essentially a witchy Manson-era horror movie, then Snowtown director Justin Kurzel’s screen rendering of “the Scottish play” is a spittle-flecked war film full of post-Braveheart mud, warpaint and Kurosawa-style heroic bloodshed. The tale is bookended by battles – faces meatily pummelled, bones crunchily broken and throats spurtingly sliced as offstage conflicts are placed centre-screen. Michael Fassbender plays the future king of Scotland as a rugged warrior coming apart at the seams, his ancient anguish apparently born of very modern post-traumatic stress. There’s a talismanic family bereavement too, which places an aching emptiness at the centre of his marriage and further bolsters his hollow-eyed descent into hell. As a result, Marion Cotillard’s Lady Macbeth is both more sympathetic and more sidelined than one might expect, no longer the driving force behind the bloody deeds, more a damaged partner in crime.
Smoke- and mist-strewn vistas abound, with every meeting placed atop a scenic ridge or an imposing weather-beaten moor; this is very much Shakespeare in the wild, its poetry visual rather than verbal. Executions are rendered as theatrical public burnings and Birnam Wood comes to Dunsinane in fiery fashion. At times it looks a little like Shakespeare meets 300, a fitting training ground for Kurzel and Fassbender’s forthcoming collaboration, the eagerly awaited computer-game adaptation Assassin’s Creed.
