MACBETH

Starring Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard

Lady M goes to town with her eye shadow!

I hesitated before buying my ticket to the latest cinematic treatment of one of the Bard's classics -- in spite of its stellar lead actors -- wary of sitting through yet another stage-bound retelling of a work I know so well. Boy, was I in for a surprise! This film doesn't simply 'open-up' the play, it de-constructs and re-constructs it into the time and place where it was originally set: the wild Scottish Highlands where witches and omens co-exist with the harsh realities of life in the Middle Ages.

The landscape -- fog and fire and breathtaking natural wonders (filmed on the Isle of Skye, I learned later) -- grounds the action to a time and place where the gruesome events don't seem so out of place. Call it the "Game of Thrones" effect, but the grimness of the setting makes the blood-drenched action more believable. And there is a lot of blood: from the battle Macbeth wins to first early glory, to the chaotic murder of Duncan and his guards, to the final battle against MacDuff, you are immersed in it.
All of this comes at a price, however: the price of Shakespeare's beautiful verse. I was continually struggling to decipher the thick Scottish brogue in many of the line readings. Some of his most-cherished soliloquies sneak-up on you -- in a way that is both organic, yet somehow offhand. This worked effectively in Lady Macbeth's "Out, damned spot!" speech; less so in Macbeth's "Tomorrow, and tomorrow and tomorrow" (delivered by an otherwise excellent Michael Fassbender as he drags around his lifeless wife). A final word about said lifeless wife: Marion Cotillard was so good I almost wished they changed the script so Lady M wouldn't have to die! She nailed the English verse like a true professional. And she's French! The ultimate compliment (for this visual medium of film) is perhaps this fact: I spent the 'dead week' at work looking into B&Bs on Skye to wander the heath where this movie was filmed.