This reworking of the Shakespeare play is gritty, grim, gloomy and fiercely violent in its staging of battle scenes. Michael Fassbender's Macbeth as a man who has lost his soul after the death of his child is great at this sort of characterization (as was seen in his interpretation of the brilliant but psychologically bent Steve Jobs) And how can one not want to see the great Marion Cotillard's version of the quietly lethal Lady Macbeth? Her "out, out damn spot!" scene in a somber chapel is nothing short of brilliant. The final confrontation between Macbeth and MacDuff is shot in a very arty style that really adds atmosphere to the Grand Guignol scenes. The cinematographer makes use of a heavy mist (which covers the field like a shroud) mixed in with a deep reddish/orange coloration embellishing the horror of the graphic battle scenes. My one chief complaint involves the often thickly (brogue-heavy) spoken lines which are quite often unintelligible. After all, Shakespeare's use of language is often difficult to decipher in the first instance. Too bad about this.
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