Macbeth Reviews

While I do miss the Scottish-ness of the original text, something about translating the story to a Cold War era Soviet nation works. Perhaps the reality of that situation and time period lends itself easily to a tale filled with murder, betrayal, power struggles, mysticism and large scale battles. It brings a fresh twist to the oft-told story, yet it also highlights some of the problems with the film as a whole.

Rupert Goold had never made a movie, for television or otherwise, before and it shows. There’s a few sequences in the play which any adaptation needs to completely nail in order to be successful. Shakespearean scholars can debate which ones those are, but for me a few of them that spring to mind are the soliloquy in which Lady Macbeth says “Out, out damned spot” or any of the sequences with the Weird Sisters (they’re a favorite of mine so I am particularly defensive over them). Lady Macbeth’s sequence is a marvel of acting on behalf of Kate Fleetwood, and Goold wisely just pointed the camera at her and left it alone allowing for the power of the words to carry the scene.

The Weird Sisters are more problematic. They begin on a correct note in which they assemble a voodoo dolly of Macbeth out of spare equipment and body parts in an underground hospital. They remain always lurking in the background in various disguises, giving the impression that they’re controlling the actions and events from a close proximity. But the hyperactive editing and seizure inducing camera work derail the “Something wicked this way comes” sequence. The decision to have them rap the “Toil and trouble” potion is odd enough, but to have them dance around dead bodies and flail about like marionettes coming undone from their strings gives the whole thing an air of unintentional camp. Try as they might, the three actresses cannot overcome this hyperactive stylization.

But Goold is blessed to have Patrick Stewart and Kate Fleetwood in the central roles. They bring a tremendous amount of feeling and layers to their parts. Fleetwood uses sexuality and subtle manipulations to encourage her husband to kill his enemies, and maybe even his friends, in order to rise to prominence. And Stewart, so beloved as Jean-Luc Picard, is a fine Macbeth. From the beginning we see the ambition growing in his eyes, mulling over the idea of murder if it is really helpful to long-term goal, and questioning what is his true fate and what is the machinations of his wife’s schemes and the Weird Sister’s meddling. These two keep the film on course when it ventures into strange territory and threatens to become something of a stylized mess. It may be imperfect, but for Stewart and Fleetwood alone it is worth a viewing.