Fassbender/Cotillard Macbeth
Saw Macbeth yesterday.
So the first thing that came into my mind was that, having previously seen McKellen and Stewart on DVD respectively from 1978(I think) and 2010, and McAvoy onstage a couple of years ago, this now completes some sort of young/old Xavier/Magneto Macbeth quartet. :D
4/5 for me. The film was beautifully shot, very stylised (which I like). Will make for a great vid. Some striking visual motifs over and over again, a beautifully done ending with Malcolm intercut with Banquo's son running toward their inexorable futures. My chief complaint would be that it doesn't have much variation in tone and pace. It's grim and barren at the start and grim and barren at the end and grim and barren throughout. What you see in the trailer is pretty much exactly the tone you get for the entire movie. Not that Macbeth is ever a barrel of laughs, but the original had a bit more texture.
A lot of that was due to the film script doing some heavy cutting to the play script, which was again mostly for the good, but you end up taking the bad along with the good. (Could have done with a bit more Macduff and a few more minutes of "all my children?") The witches were certainly far more effective because they are now very taciturn. I always have problems with the witches on stage because if you give them the full "double double toil and trouble" stuff it starts heading the way of inadvertent comedy, and the more they talk the more they feel like chattering crazy women rather than supernatural beings of creepiness. Which wasn't the intention back in Shakespeare's day, when witches were still genuinely creepy, and I liked that the film was able to restore the wild creepy factor.
The acting was very good, but I feel like I need to qualify that by saying "good for film". It becomes particularly obvious when you compare Fassbender's performance with the rest of the Xaviers and Magnetos because he, unlike the other three, has less stage experience, and it comes through in how he connects to the words. I don't mean to say that he doesn't internalise the words quite so well and it feels like he doesn't own them as well as the others... or maybe I do mean that? Or was it a deliberate choice? Anyway, his delivery has an interesting way of projecting inward rather than outward. I would very much like to see him live on stage just to see what he's capable of.
Cotillard, similar story. Beautiful psychological texture, very good acting for film. I don't know her theatrical background and don't know if she's done the rounds at the Comedie Francaise or whatever, but of course for her it's an extra layer of language complexity. I greatly admire what she's pulled off but I think it's fair to say she's not quite up there with the stage greats in what was brought to this particular role in English. Maybe I've become a bit of a stage snob? It's hard to compare stage and screen side by side. And this is a fiendishly difficult role, I have rarely liked anyone I've seen in it. I liked her here, but I liked her in other roles more. (The role that still sticks with me was her supporting role in A Very Long Engagement, which was when I saw her for the first time and she completely upstaged Audrey Tatou in that film. So brief, so good.)
Anyway. I think I might be getting a bit precious about Shakespeare. This is a great director/actors team and I look forward to seeing them reunited for Assassin's Creed.
Special mention to Macduff, who - I realised after the fact - was played by the same guy who played Cesare's wonderful assassin sidekick in The Borgias.
Click to viewSo the first thing that came into my mind was that, having previously seen McKellen and Stewart on DVD respectively from 1978(I think) and 2010, and McAvoy onstage a couple of years ago, this now completes some sort of young/old Xavier/Magneto Macbeth quartet. :D
4/5 for me. The film was beautifully shot, very stylised (which I like). Will make for a great vid. Some striking visual motifs over and over again, a beautifully done ending with Malcolm intercut with Banquo's son running toward their inexorable futures. My chief complaint would be that it doesn't have much variation in tone and pace. It's grim and barren at the start and grim and barren at the end and grim and barren throughout. What you see in the trailer is pretty much exactly the tone you get for the entire movie. Not that Macbeth is ever a barrel of laughs, but the original had a bit more texture.
A lot of that was due to the film script doing some heavy cutting to the play script, which was again mostly for the good, but you end up taking the bad along with the good. (Could have done with a bit more Macduff and a few more minutes of "all my children?") The witches were certainly far more effective because they are now very taciturn. I always have problems with the witches on stage because if you give them the full "double double toil and trouble" stuff it starts heading the way of inadvertent comedy, and the more they talk the more they feel like chattering crazy women rather than supernatural beings of creepiness. Which wasn't the intention back in Shakespeare's day, when witches were still genuinely creepy, and I liked that the film was able to restore the wild creepy factor.
The acting was very good, but I feel like I need to qualify that by saying "good for film". It becomes particularly obvious when you compare Fassbender's performance with the rest of the Xaviers and Magnetos because he, unlike the other three, has less stage experience, and it comes through in how he connects to the words. I don't mean to say that he doesn't internalise the words quite so well and it feels like he doesn't own them as well as the others... or maybe I do mean that? Or was it a deliberate choice? Anyway, his delivery has an interesting way of projecting inward rather than outward. I would very much like to see him live on stage just to see what he's capable of.
Cotillard, similar story. Beautiful psychological texture, very good acting for film. I don't know her theatrical background and don't know if she's done the rounds at the Comedie Francaise or whatever, but of course for her it's an extra layer of language complexity. I greatly admire what she's pulled off but I think it's fair to say she's not quite up there with the stage greats in what was brought to this particular role in English. Maybe I've become a bit of a stage snob? It's hard to compare stage and screen side by side. And this is a fiendishly difficult role, I have rarely liked anyone I've seen in it. I liked her here, but I liked her in other roles more. (The role that still sticks with me was her supporting role in A Very Long Engagement, which was when I saw her for the first time and she completely upstaged Audrey Tatou in that film. So brief, so good.)
Anyway. I think I might be getting a bit precious about Shakespeare. This is a great director/actors team and I look forward to seeing them reunited for Assassin's Creed.
Special mention to Macduff, who - I realised after the fact - was played by the same guy who played Cesare's wonderful assassin sidekick in The Borgias.