Timeless allegory hits home

Justin Kurzel's powerfully reimagined Macbeth delivers the bard's keen insights to a new generation.

 

MACBETH

Director: Justin Kurzel
Cast: Michael Fassbender, Elizabeth Debicki, Marion Cotillard
Rating: (R16)
Three and a half stars (out of five)

 

Shakespeare's shortest tragedy details what happens when Macbeth, a kinsman of the King of Scotland, is told by three witches that he will be crowned.

His ambition, fanned by a driven, goading wife, ignites a trail of murder, mayhem and madness.

The opening battle scene, in which Macbeth (Michael Fassbender) leads his men to war against the traitorous Macdonwald, is a deft piece of cinematic storytelling; gritty realism grounding events in beautiful, harsh Scotland, blended with slow-motion action, otherworldly lighting and silhouettes reminding the audience they are watching a timeless allegory.

Fassbender and Marion Cotillard (Lady Macbeth) play their parts admirably.

But it is Sean Harris who, as the anguished Macduff, whose wife and children have been murdered at Macbeth's command, gives the perfect performance of a Shakespearean character come to life.

There are always world figures to whom a story of self-aggrandizing can be applied as a warning.

But as the credits roll on newly crowned Malcolm (Jack Reynor) basking in his subjects' adulation while Banquo's orphaned son Fleance (Lochlann Harris) determines to exact revenge, Macbeth succeeds in making the question of corrupted ambition a deeply personal one.

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