MovieChat Forums > Macbeth (2015) Discussion > This film doesn't suck

This film doesn't suck

posted 8 years ago by billanubis
3 replies | jump to latest

I'm sorry, but it doesn't. It can't. Maybe I am too soft, but besides vapid tripe like The Room or Birdemic 2, I will always hesitate to uniformly pan a movie, because there is often so much to like.

And in this version of Macbeth it's no different. Look at the incredible cast they assembled. A dream team of amazing talent, and even those who don't appear often, like David Thewlis, really give it their all. And can we talk about the costumes and the set design? Maybe I'm alone, but I loathe modern retellings of the story, and always think it should be fixed in Dark Ages Scotland where it began - a time of Knights and codes of chivlary and uncharted wilderness, where people really did believe dark spectres lurked. Everything from the castle, to the coronation robes is so beautifully rendered.

In terms of core elements, there is so much to like about this movie.
But the problem is that, in a sense, they didn't find the right balance. If you overstate the text, you get something akin to Kenneth Brannagh's 2013 staging of the play, which, though I like Brannagh, is bloody awful. People scream their lines, and there's no nuance to it at all. But fail to find the emotion in the text, and even actors like Fassbender can't save it.

His Macbeth does not fail because of him, but because of the theme of the film. He is portrayed as a broken man, compensating for a lost child and his own demons conjured up by PTSD. And to go down that road takes away the key theme of the play: hubris.
So, rather than see Macbeth become an arrogant tyrant, confident and secure in prophecy and his own suffocating sense of invincibility, Fassbender's version starts as a broken man and ends that way - muttering and mumbling, a very clear victim rather than villain.

I applaud them for this different take on the text. But it doesn't make for enjoyable viewing, because we don't get to see his power lust, we don't get to see him enjoy power and play the King, because his Macbeth barely seems to want the crown at all, he's more dead than alive.

[–] iAmTheOneWhoKnocks 8 years ago

What you disliked about the film, I actually appreciated immensely. I found it made for a much more tragic telling of the story. It was easier to hate Macbeth in the previous films because of the reasons you outlined, but here it's devastating to watch him spiral into insanity. I know it may take away from the theme of hubris, but as a tale, I think it works better. We see the man fall deeper and deeper into madness and he recognizes his descent until by the end when he has a clear chance to kill Macduff, he lets go. He wants to die. He wants his pain to end. What a depressing ending.

It felt much more real and less like a stage play. Which I think is what they were going for. All of Shakespeare's other works suffer from this problem as well. They were written for the stage and that's exactly what it feels like. They have a clear moral to the story but they feel more like Aesop fables than actual character studies. His stories are more about the moral and less about the character. Here however, I feel like I'm actually living through the tragedy instead of having it told to me.

[–] billanubis 7 years ago

But wouldn't you say that, from a narrative perspective, it makes the movie less compelling? If we chart a character who rises to great heights of confidence through hubris only to fall at the last to despair - we, the audience, are taken on a journey of emotions, we are invested, excited.
But the Macbeth in this story was clearly damaged from the start, and so he never really connects with the audience in the same way. Rather than a noble warrior becoming a blood soaked tyrant, he shuffles pitiably from scene to scene, even when they outright invent stuff to make him seem more evil.
It's such a strange choice, and ultimately I'm not sure if it worked or not.

[–] glynnpadraic 7 years ago

Agreed. I thought it was very good