Macbeth (2015)

I seem to have trouble discerning words spoken in movies. My auditory exams a couple years ago reported naught but innocuous occlusion, but a few movies say otherwise. Scottish Shakespeare doesn't do me any favors either. I missed a good deal of dialogue (and monologue), and unfortunately had only ever read about the first half of the play, so I fell behind the plot and forfeited significant pleasures of the Bard. Well, I should be reading it anyway. The movie itself, however, was gorgeous. My memory of Valhalla Rising is dim, but floated forth here. I now notice Valhalla was shot in Scotland. The mood is similar, as I recall, and singular: all bleak mountain mists shrouding savagery. How can life have meaning in medieval Scotland?

I could hardly have designed this adaptation better. Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard are in the 98th percentile of actors I would have wanted in this, and I wouldn't have misjudged. Everything is artfully and nihilistically spare: monochromatism, lonely cellos, unblinking eyes. The ghost of Banquo is as lively as anything else. The witches curse Macbeth, but really all of Scotland is bewitched. Everything about this movie would hurl someone toward insanity; my only question is how Lady Macbeth found the seeds of desire anywhere in those sunless hills to fuel her ambition.

As an adaptation this is foundationally flawed (we're suspending our suspicion that it doesn't really make sense to do Shakespeare like this), but as an adaptation I can say I wouldn't have done it any different.