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Category:    Home > Reviews > Drama > Literature > Macbeth (2006/Starz/Geoffrey Wright version)

Macbeth (2006/Starz/Geoffrey Wright version)

 

Picture: B-     Sound: B-     Extras: C-     Film: C

 

 

Well, my fellow droogies, what say it's time for a bit of the old ultraviolence, eh?  Aside from a couple of the history plays or possibly Titus Andronicus, what better play from the Shakespeare canon to Goth up than Macbeth?

 

Adaptations, updatings and bowdlerizations have gone on since the generation following the Bard and recent cinematic versions have only been rivaled, in numeric terms, by the Jane Austen cottage industry.  In terms of quality, Ms Austen has been treated more civilly than the ubiquitous Will.  We have Hawke's and Branagh's Hamlets, DiCaprio's Romeo, Fishburne's and Eamon Walker's Othellos, Julia Stile's Kat(e), and now Sam Worthington, doing his best Jack White imitation, as Macbeth. 

A morose, abysmal, slightly off-centered Macbeth.

 

This one is a fast, violent, sexy, ugly, incomprehensible bloody mess.  Literally.

 

As with many productions, both theatrical and cinematic, everyone is looking for a new angle.  And, as with many productions, that new angle is in your face upfront: a concept or a placing of the work in a context radically different from the original.  As these types of productions progress, the newness falls away and we are returned, sometimes jarringly, back to the original and that is the case with Macbeth.  The context is the Melbourne Australia gang underworld; the spin is a not so subtle combination of Asian gang and Goth sensibilities.

 

And you thought you'd heard it all.

 

What works here is they have decided to keep the original language.  Well, that's what works for a Shakespeare buff; what works for this film's imagined target audience is hard to say.  Director Geoffrey Wright (Romper Stomper, fer chrissakes) is earnestly working away at something, perhaps it is after all a sensibility.  It opens in a graveyard with the Weird Sisters, tricked out as just pubescent high schoolers with a thin gloss of Goth, going through their witch gyrations and nary a word is said.  Cut to the carnage of gang war and the viewer, familiar with Macbeth, realizes that this is the power struggle that will propel the "hero" to the top.  Still, there is not much vocalizing.  And then, five minutes or so in comes the language and the dichotomy is revealed. What those unfamiliar with the play might realize is anyone's guess because, without the context of the original story, it seems the viewer would be hard put indeed to understand what all the jabbering is about.   Truly this is a case of 1 and 1 equaling zero.

 

As with any Shakespeare adaptation, there some things that translates particularly well.  The overall story remains in tact though there is some abridgement of the original.  After a rough, fitful start, the film settles into a steady pace and that is not necessarily good news. Lady Macbeth (Victoria Hill, also co-screenwriter) starts comatose and, thankfully, builds very nicely to the point of a credible performance.  The "Unsex me here" soliloquy is a high spot of the entire film, bringing out the motivation, vulnerability and all encompassing ambition that is at once her persona and her downfall.  Duncan (Gary Sweet), too, gives a solid performance; otherwise, there is a general functional disconnect between actors simply mouthing words without the commensurate emotions that spark them.

 

In a nice touch we actually get to see the ingredients that make up the witches’ brew: eye of newt, fillet of snake, poison'd entrails, tongue of dog etc.  Unfortunately, these are being tossed into the cauldron by the now naked, barely pubescent Goth gals and, when Macbeth stumbles on them in the night, things get all sexed up.  This is the kind of Buffy the fanboys really wanted to see; Shakespeare it ain't.  Birnam Wood, on the other hand, comes to Dunsinane rather cleverly in a logging truck, Trojan Horse style: everyone jumps out with their assault weapons; let the carnage begin!

 

In the end, we are left with cliché in hand: stylized, slo-mo slaughterBonnie and Clyde/Sam Peckinpah style, though the Shane MacGowanish kilt for Macbeth gives the Scots their props nicely. Overall, Macbeth is neither as hyperkinetic as DiCaprio's R & J, nor as moody as Hawke's Hamlet, but probably closest in kinship to the BBC TV production of Othello, with Macbeth as the London police commissioner in what is essentially a reconfigured crime drama.  Macbeth is nowhere near as successful, however, and the reason is simple.

 

Romper Stomper, fer chrissakes.

 

The anamorphically enhanced 1.85 X 1 image is looking good for the format, despite the cinematography of Director of Photography Will Gibson (see the HD-DVD review for Wolf Creek elsewhere on this site) that is the same, tired, darkened-with-no-point stylized look that is beyond played out.  The Dolby Digital 5.1 mix is occurrently active, but the sound design has very limited memorability or character.

 

The extras are lamentable; all concerned, director and actors, with the possible exception of Victoria Hill, would have been better served if they kept silent.  The sound and image throughout the film is, respectively, loud and brash and a music video could have been pulled out of any two minute section in numerous of spots.

 

Oh, and then there is the tagline: something wicked this way comes.

 

Indeed.

 

 

-   Don Wentworth


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