Spinning Macbeth
Shakespeare loved 'spinning' his characters, none more so than Macbeth
A 'spinning' character engages in an intense internal circular emotional/mental battle, and that battle is the main plot of the play
In the play, Act IV Scene I, when Macbeth is on a full-tilt breakdown and demands answers from the witches, each of the witches physically spins Macbeth around three times (three times for each of the witches), his internal state frenetically spinning round and round
Tarr's Macbeth does contain some of his directorial trademarks, especially the last 7/8 minutes of the film, albeit not as pronounced as they would evolve to be
Tarr's Macbeth is all about Macbeth, and as such, all scenes without Macbeth or Lady Macbeth are gone, but one does not have to read the play to understand the film, and the omission of the scenes in no way shape form changes (nor weakens) the plot/characterizations/thematic structure/literary depth. All the scenes enacted are enacted in their proper play order.
Duncan's 70 lines are gutted to 6, something I found hilarious upon second viewing - he's gutted to death by the director before Macbeth bloodily executes him.
Duncan's two sons, too youthful to be relevant and somewhat cowardly, gone off the butchering block as well, Malcolm's 212 lines gutted to 1.
The messenger Ross, whose "good news" triggered all the events in the play, and who for me is a sticking point character I've written tomes about in the past, a character whose words manipulated and guided the entire train of events in the play more so than the witches, who in his own way was a foil of Macbeth's, who magnificently demonstrated Shakespeare's prestigious formulation of dualism, the entire character and his 135 lines, gone.
Macduff's 180 lines are slashed down to 44-45.
But our dear Porter, our very dear Porter, whose monologue about equivocation is a famous keystone of the play and also serves as a richly layered metaphor magnifying plot elements and themes and indicting guilty characters and adding additional plot narrative retains nearly all of his lines, about 41/42 of his 46 lines.
The entire play except for two scenes occur within Macbeth's cavernously chambred castle; the opening scene occurs on the road to Macbeth's castle, the finale scene occurs on his castle grounds.
All the shots are intimate up-close shots above the waist, most of them facial only against the castle's walls, the heat of the skin (emotions, passion, feverish imaginings, guilt) rising up and twisting with the icy cold air (nature's indifference, numbing reality).
The up-close facial shots manifest one of the play's themes about false faces: faces being books where strange matters are read, faces where the the mind's construction is found, false faces that must hide what the false heart doth know, faces made vizards to our hearts, innocent faces badged with blood, innocent cream faces damned to devil black, and so on, and the up-close shots reveal the mental emotional internal disintegratory 'spinning' of Macbeth, and Lady Macbeth.
The deep level of intimacy depicted between Macbeth and his wife, between a man and a woman, rightfully (thank you Bela Tarr) eliminates the "Lady Macbeth is evil and to blame for everything" [mis-]interpretation of the play, the intimacy reminding viewers that a relationship between a man and a woman is complex, especially a man and a woman whom like Macbeth and his wife have a lost a child and remain childless
The castle's walls and chambres and its descents/ascents are used as characters themselves, externalizations of the state of mind of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth; the production was filmed in the labyrinth of caves and tunnels subterraneanly spanning for miles under Budapest's Castle Hill:
http://tinyurl.com/lt9xeju [jpg]
http://www.eyeflare.com/article/buda-castle-district-budapest/
Below are observations as the film unfolds
One brazier of fire blazing on each side of looming stone archway; each brazier is set diagonally to the other, with a tunnel of distance between them, just like Macbeth and Lady Macbeth; throughout most of the film they are physically framed diagonal to each other and wrapped around each other, yet there is a tunnel of distance between them, which they are trying to bridge with deep raw intimacy; the diagonal framing of the braziers with a tunnel between also mirrors Duncan and Macbeth, Macbeth on the down slant at the beginning, with a tunnel of time to go before he could ever dream of ascending beyond Thane of Glamis to Thane of Cawdor (Cawdor being close to the King's castle), let alone King
Macbeth, Banquo in distance walking through gate towards three seemingly wise men (witches) in black cloaks; I love that the men are framed as three wise men (Three Magi....) instead of witches, that emphasizes one of the main themes of the play (dualism, two sides to the same coin, appearances are deceiving, they seem wise but their "wisdom" - their ambitious prophecy - immediately triggers thoughts of murder in Macbeth's mind); The Three Magi bestowed a similar ambitious prophecy onto a newborn babe in a manger; the three wise men are physically hearty/meaty men yet they writhe like breath in the wind around Macbeth and Banquo, their corporal forms kissing them like wind
Three wise men cast in blood red glow, harbinger of things to come, blood will have blood, the blood red glow will soon corporalize into a bloody banquet
By all appearances, Macbeth and Banquo, initially in darkness, cavalry routinely marching, seem unenthused, like they lost a battle; Banquo's opening dialogue has no sound of victory, only defeat
When the three wise men greet Macbeth as a future second Thane (making him closer to the King's castle and closer to the throne) and King, victory music starts playing ....oops....it's victory music to signify the Scots won their battle, but still ....
The stone gate tunnel arch is cast in coal black, perfectly symmetrical, smooth, roadway also fairly smooth, straight, a cold dark bitter snowy night
Macbeth imaging future deeds while behind him lays the smooth road he walked on, that road now disappearing into the blue-black darkness, the past behind him, his passage through the tunnel, his birthing through the tunnel, life-changing
Lady Macbeth descends down stairs while reading, we only see her waist up, her body rising and falling with each step, a floating motion, a floating motion that becomes a directorial trademark of Tarr; the camera angle is looking up at her, a triangular angle, almost bending into the castle wall; as she begins reading the letter her thoughts are straight (innocent) - the castle wall is above her to the left and the bricks are formed with straight smooth lines (like her thoughts), but as the letter progresses and she reads about the wise men's prophecy, her thoughts turn bad, and the castle wall shifts to knotted craggy stone formations, like terrain of a brain, an external manifestation of her warped thoughts, the castle shapeshifting to her thoughts
Use of castle could be a homage to Orson Welles' Macbeth, his nightmarish castle also created to be an external manifestation of everything internal, to stress harsh brutal inhospitable nature of time period and landscape, and to serve as a symbolic antithesis to Christianity
I love the colour palette Tarr uses throughout: silvery-metallic moon lighting with a purple tinting (royal, regal); the whole play is silver'd in a moon's eclipse
Lady Macbeth gives voice to murderous thoughts as she's physically descending in her walk, she internally descends as she physically descends, the castle wall looks blasted, when she stops at an open passage/archway the wall structure smooths out just as her mind and her will smooths out - she's resolved in what she wants to do: her 'unsex me here' speech as she's looking through an archway ahead into the future [towards persuading Macbeth to kill Duncan], she's tense with emotion and Macbeth comes upon her from behind, incredible how the intimacy is so instantaneous and passionate, fantastic acting
Duncan arrives, two rows of a pearled string of fiery braziers in the black chambre behind him, looks like a funeral procession of lights, Duncan beware!, he and Lady Macbeth walk into the chambre and are devoured by the darkness, a dying footfall echoes
Macbeth walks into scene with same lighting schematic behind him, as his monologue progress he walks away from black chambre into light and we see a desk or a lectern to the left with papers, scrolls, lit candles, could the black chambre be a church afterall? The implication and the symbolism if it is a church, perhaps an unused church, a reference to Macbeth's preference for the oracular over Christianity
Macbeth continuing monologue and we see stone staircase ascending behind him (an escape route back to sanity....), lit up, a gold-glinted white, while he's at the bottom of Jacob's ladder, no divine guidance for him
His hands almost in prayer
Confrontation between him and Lady in normal light, very intimate, sensual, behind her head the castle wall is dark gray and once again blasted, then a shift into conversation with Macbeth and Banquo, and between them, the castle wall is solid dark gray with few cracks, representing their friendship at that moment, mostly solid with few cracks
Macbeth walks from left to right in revolving motion, a planetary revolution, positioning himself in dark airy space of walkway with the archway offering two impenetrable shoalblack directions, Banquo revolves right back to right side, two planets revolving around each other, once again the castle wall between them, dark grey, but now with increased cracks and fully speckled with either tiny cracks or stones, their friendship crumbling
The revolving motion of the movements is a directorial trademark, heavily symbolic; throughout the rest of the play, Macbeth revolves around Lady Macbeth
From the moment Lady Macbeth began reading Macbeth's letter about battle victory and the wise men's prophecy, from that moment onward, Lady Macbeth and Macbeth orbit around Duncan, even after he is killed
This planetary motion concept is laid bare in Tarr's Werckmeister harmóniák (2000)
Banquo exits, Macbeth ponders after him, then turns back around, rotating around himself (spinning) a moving a few steps forward into an open chambre area with two passages, two directions, like the ventricles of the heart, the chambres of the brain, good versus evil, two diametrically opposed impulses pulling at him, spinning him in circles
He ascends stairs to go to Duncan's chambre, makes a quick turn (the turn in thought his courage screwed to the sticking-place), Lady Macbeth on other side of corner (excellent camera work) and the wall to the side of him is now blasted
Lady Macbeth a raven in the rook of the wall, face half in dark half in light, two personae at war within her
Camera flips down like a falcon in mid-flight, 90 degree camera flip, Lady Macbeth herself a falcon, towering in her pride of place (but eventually hawked at and killed by her own mousy-owled conscious)
Macbeth far down below where he originally was (symbolism), murdering Duncan, the chambre seems to be a central location, the bed sheet a vivid shade of yellow, the "sun" that Macbeth and Lady Macbeth orbit around and are continuously drawn back to in guilt
Banquo with head against archway, oracular poise, knows what Macbeth did and augurs ruination of Macbeth
Macbeth moves forward, towards murder of Banquo
Macbeth facing left in an open passageway with multiple open chambres, fiery braziers, smooth castle wall broken by all the openings, Macbeth with a smooth veneer broken by all the choices past and choices present and doubt and regret
Macbeth facing left giving a speech to convince murderer to murder Banquo, Macbeth turns around and exits right while Lady Macbeth is on far left with back turned, having listened to Macbeth's speech to murderer, she's draped in silvery moonlight (with purplish tinge) with silhouetted entry gate bars to her side, entry gate bars are prison bars, she's internally imprisoned
Macbeth re-enters left but revolves to her right, then revolves again left, moving her away from silhouetted prison bars, but then the wall features a silhouetted fresco of tangled silhouetted bars behind their heads, mainly her head, both of them mentally imprisoned, Lady Macbeth far more so than Macbeth
Macbeth revolves right into banquet
Moonlit wall silhouetted with wild foliage (wild thoughts) as he mentally breaks down during feast
Entry gate bars (prison bars) in stark silhouette behind him, the bars stretch down wall and to floor and continue forward like a striped lozenge, bars striping the very ground he's standing on, he's fully caged, imprisoned (by shadows....)
Macbeth carries wife into chambre which with a camera trick flips to a cavern with wise men (witches) cast in blood light
Macbeth in blood plasma light
Macbeth stepping out of cavern right into tangled tree branches, tangled veins of thought, tangled veins squeezing the heart's conscious, tangled branches are nerves and vessels in his brain reaching out to 'spin' him
Hands gripping his head, his thoughts spinning in a million directions, he collapses back into castle chambre where he was last in with wife, normal lighting, hallucination over, great camera work (and phenomenal acting) considering the film itself was filmed in one continual 60 minute take
Tarr also pulled off a seamless switch-a-than earlier; after Duncan's murder, Macbeth carried Lady Macbeth to a chambre and the camera shifted to the Porter monologue then revolved around to alarum over Duncan's murder then revolved around to Banquo against the arch (Thou hast it now: king, Cawdor, Glamis, all) and rotated right into Macbeth for the "cracked friendship" exchange (do you ride this afternoon)
Brilliant use of castle as character and metaphoric manifestation - Macbeth once again plotting to murder, this time Macduff and his wife and all of their children, the castle wall behind Macbeth is smooth gray with purple tinge, but top part of wall is heavily cracked, frescoed in veins, nerves, tangled twisting branches, looks a bit like ivy, and the pattern/design/foliage is positioned exactly level with Macbeth's head - he's facing left and the pattern seems to shoot right out of his head (and hurled far into the distance) and onto the castle wall, creeping and crawling and sprawling to the far left and right off the screen, reminding me of Botticelli's Primavera painting where the wind Zephyr ravished one of the nymphs and tangles of vines and flowers grew out of her mouth, transforming her into Flora, g/ddess of flowers and spring (Macbeth transformed into quite the opposite), as he leaps on the horse Macbeth's spinning brain waves spin out onto the wall, o'erleaping the very film frame, strangling the entire left portion of the stone edifice, his brain patterns, his nerve maps, ingrained into the wall and stretching off into the distance to Macduff's doomed castle
I love how Lady Macbeth normally walks and talks through her guilt, Tarr has chosen a more sombre, rational, philosophic breakdown for Lady Macbeth - she's more awake than asleep
The last 8 minutes are surreal, sheer perfection, Macbeth rotating and revolving like a planet through to the end, eclipsed by all his mistakes and all his fears and all his guilt, he's spun out into the elemental iciness and smokiness and spectralness of night; I love how Macduff is still in a mixed state of shock and anguish over the loss of his wife and children, there's no macho-bravado emanating from him
10/10