Film: "Macbeth"

A bloody brilliant adaptation

Oct 1st 2015, 17:04 BY F.S.

THERE have been many film adaptations of the Scottish play, but none more pared back, bloody,
bleak and brilliant than this latest one, brought to us by a near-neophyte (Justin Kurzel, whose
only other feature film is the award-winning "Snowtown"). It stars the great Michael Fassbender,
who delivers immortal lines such as "Oh, full of scorpions is my mind" with the raw intensity of
a man born, not trained, to say them. Screen adaptations of Shakespeare tend to be rather flimsy
affairs, populated with overly earnest RADA graduates with clipped RP accents. But this
"Macbeth" is a film, an epic in every sense.

This is hardly the first film to understand the bloodiness of the play. Roman Polanski's 1971
adaptation, for instance, came under fire from the New Yorkers great Pauline Kael for being so
violent that "it's difficult to pay attention to the poetry". But while violence abounds in this
version, poetry is all. A rugged, angry lyricism permeates the blistering visuals and the seriously
trimmed but passionately delivered dialogue (reduced from four hours to just 113 minutes).

These visuals are the work of Adam Arkapaw, the cinematographer behind "True Detective",
whose rendering of war-torn Scotland is every bit as atmospheric as his Louisiana badlands. This
is a man who knows how to put landscape front and centrean extraordinary achievement when
the core text and characters are so well-known. An imposing strings-heavy score by Jed Kurzel,
the director's brother, thickens the mood further.

This Macbeth is less a faltering politician, more a broken warrior. The film begins with perhaps
the most spectacular battle scenes ever created for the Bard: a mass of scorched Highlands and
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thrusting blades, a slow-motion attack of shadowy bodies, and the tiny, haunting figure of a small
boy being laid to rest, his face painted in the blue and white of the Saltire. In the background are
the three witches, a trio of plausible wretches here, with facial scarring that suggests torture
rather than that magic. They move in and out of the mist more like hallucinations than something
occult. Even the "double double toil and trouble" line is gone.

This is Braveheart on heat; at its centre is a fearless and patriotic warrior whose ambition is a
burden, not something he sought. We learn at the outset that Macbeth and his wife have just lost
a childsomething hinted in the play but made certain in this adaptation. It lends yet more
pathos to Mr Fassbender's devastatingly pitiful mad King. It is not so much his greed and
megalomania that unmake him, but his need to fill a personal void. His emotional loss is
exacerbated by what seems to be a sort of post-traumatic stress disorder wrought by war. Mr
Fassbender twists his face into the confused pain of shell-shock; his wide-eyed grins morph into
tears in the blink of an eye. When he murders King Duncan to fulfil the prophecy, he does so
with bloody abandon, like someone who left his conscience and consciousness on the battlefield
long ago.

Lady Macbeth, played by the excellent Marion Cotillard, is also unusually sympathetic here. For
the most part she seems haunted rather than power-hungry, bereft of both her son and her partner.
"We, fail?" she pleads, desperately trying to reconnect with a husband she knows she already
lost. The central couple's relationship fizzes with chemistry and pain.

Mr Kurzel has moved most of the action from the labyrinthine castle corridors to the outdoors,
where royals tread in the muck and mud of Inverness, despite their crowns (it was filmed largely
on the Isle of Skye). The deaths of the Macduff family members, as punishment for Macduffs
treachery, are shown in all their horror, not offstage. A bid for authenticity is everywhere, from
the thick Scottish accents (far better than Orson Welles's 1948 version, thank goodness) to the
ominous war paint on the face of Macbeth's loyal friend Banquo (played by a splendid Paddy
Considine).

The result is a gritty, spartan adaptation that stands apart from the rest. Many will buy their
tickets to see two of this generation's finest actors play two of the most coveted Shakespeare
roles. But while Mr Fassbender and Ms Cotillard are indeed excellent, what makes this film truly
great is Mr Kurzel's singular vision for this renowned tragedy.

"Macbeth" is released in British cinemas on October 2nd and in America on 4th December.

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A CRITICAL ESSAY*

Look, if you cant see whats so irresistible about Clark Jug Ears Gable of the Jack
oLantern grin, then much of the appeal of Gone With the Wind goes out the window.
Furthermore, if Vivien Leighs anorexic, over-dressed Scarlett OHara seems to you one of the
least credible of Hollywood femmes fatales, most of whose petulant squeaks are, to boot, audible
only to bats
And, finally, if you cant see anything romantic AT ALL about the more than feudal
darkness of the Old South, then, oh, then, you are left alone with the naked sexual ideology of
the most famous movie ever made in all its factitious simplicity. Macho violence versus female
guile, bull vs. bitch.
The first time I saw this meretricious epic, it was the fifties, on one of the many occasions
when they dusted off the reels and sent it on the road again to warp the minds of a new
generation. Though I was but a kid in short pants, then, with zilch consciousness, truly I thought
it stank. But I was of that generation whose sexual fantasies were molded by Elvis Presley and
James Dean.
Presley, white trash with black style, in his chubby, epicene and gyrating person, himself
the barbarian at the gates of Tara talk about irresistible, how could even Scarlett have resisted
had Elvis pleaded with her to let him be her teddy bear? As for Dean impossible to imagine
James Dean carrying a girl upstairs. I used to fantasise about doing that to him. Fifty-six was,
perhaps, the best year in which to view Gone With the Wind.
But the big question. Why, oh, why did the BBC choose to empty out Gone With the
Wind, that hoary sackful of compulsive trash at this point in time? More why did the
Corporation decide to play Santa with this thing at the fag-end of Christmas, when, softened up
by grub and booze, the notion might be deemed to be uniquely vulnerable? Impossible not to
smell a rat. Part of the Womens Lib backlash?
I still think it stinks, this movie famous for being famous: that reduces the American Civil
War to the status of spectacle (the Hollywood attitude to war, which reaches its apogee in
Apocalypse Now); that advertises the masochistic pleasures of tight lacing did you notice how
often Mammy is depicted brutally compressing Scarlett into her corset? What kind of image is
that?
But, goodness me, how enjoyable it is! I curled up in my armchair, giggling helplessly,
weakly muttering: Break his kneecaps, about every five minutes, sometimes more often.
Whose kneecaps? Well, Ashley Wilkes, obviously! What a whingeing creep. Not those
of Big Sam, patently the Best Man on the entire plantation even if touched with Uncle Tom, such
an obvious father figure that I cant see why Scarlett, father-fixated as she is, doesnt marry him,
thereby giving the plot a whole new dimension.
But it is, of course, Rhett Butlers kneecaps that seem ripest for the treatment. That Rhett
Butler and his travelling salesmans lines: You need to be kissed often, by somebody who knows
how to do it. This is the authentic language of a sexually incompetent man whistling in the dark,
but let me not continue with that train of thought or else Ill start feeling sorry for him. And who

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could feel sorry for a man who says, as he closes in for the clinch: This is what you were meant
for?
Since Scarlett is characterized as Maggie Thatcher manque, I would have thought she
was meant for high office rather than low innuendo. And, give Gone with the Wind its due,
implicit in the script is just how ill at ease Scarlett is with the role in which the plot has cast her.
Given any other option than that of the Southern belle, even that of a poor white farmer, she
grasps it with both hands. Her sexual manipulations seem to spring from sheer boredom rather
than actual malice, from the frustrated ambition of a baulked entrepreneur of the kind who has
given capitalism a bad name. A bitch, not from sexual frustration (that old chestnut!) but from
existential frustration.
After all, as soon as she gets her hands on that lumber mill, she starts coming on like the
Godmother and Rhett cant think of a way to stop her.
Yet all this is going on in the gaps of the overt ideology of the movie. Which is very
simple no more than The Taming of the Shrew in hooped skirts. But in a film so extravagantly
long, the viewer has ample time to ponder the socially determined nature of the shrew, which is
often that of a woman forced to live for love when she really isnt interested in love at all, and
why should she be, dammit.
Not that Rhett Butler does manage to tame this shrew, in the end. He may give out with
genuinely unforgivable things as: Ive always thought a good lashing with a buggy whip would
benefit you immensely. But he never does batter her. Since he is the sort of macho weakling who
is off like a long dog at the whiff of a genuine emotional demand, the obvious strategy to be rid
of him is to say you truly love him.
So Scarlett wins out; off goes Rhett, thank goodness, and tomorrow is another day. Now
Scarlett can get on with amassing a great estate and bankrupting small businessmen, for which
activity breaking hearts must always have been an inadequate substitute.
There is, of course, the one really disgusting scene, that of the famous marital rape,
which, in the late thirties, was deemed the very stuff of girlish dream and is now grounds for
divorce. As a teenager, Im bound to admit I didnt find this scene as repellent as I do now. Since
it occurs three-quarters of the way through the second half, it is high time for Scarletts come-
uppance and, God help us, the whole scene is set up so that the viewer wants Rhett Butler to rape
his wife!
Not that there is any suggestion it is rape. Irresistible Rhett, his ears rampant as if ears
were secondary sexual characteristics, is but asserting his rights over the body of the woman who
has rejected him out of selfish, narcissistic reasons such as disinclination for motherhood. This
one night youre not turning me out. He scoops her up in his arms.
Cut to the morning after, Scarlett stretches luxuriously in bed, smiling, singing a happy
little song to herself. See? Thats just what the bitch needed all the time. And if you believe that,
you will believe anything.
But. Perhaps. Perhaps she had broken his kneecaps, at that! Surely that is the only thing
that could make her smile, at this juncture! And that must be the real reason why he has to go off
to Europe, to visit a good kneecap specialist. Of course, they cant say that in the script, but I am
sure that is what happened, really. (Angela Carter
The Belle as Businessperson)

A
READING COMPREHENSION

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1. What is the movies naked sexual ideology according to the author? Do you agree to her
opinion?
2. Why is the movie described as meretricious?
3. Why does the author say that the fifties were the best period for watching the movie?
4. Compare Clark Gable to Elvis Presley or James Dean. What is the main difference from the
point of view of the characters they portray on screen?
5. Why is the author wondering about the reasons for BBCs decision to play the movie? How
can you characterize her reaction?
6. According to the author, in what way can Gone with the Wind be described as depicting
violence?
7. Why does the auhtor say that Scarlett should break Ashleys kneepcaps? Do you agree with
her?
8. Is the description of Scarlett as a Maggie Thatcher manquee accurate in your opinion?
9. What does the movie have in common with The Taming of the Shrew?
10. Comment upon the authors representation of the rape scene. Do you agree with her views?

B
VOCABULARY

1. Fill in the blanks with words and phrases from the text above:
1. He behaved with the ambition of a ________ entrepreneur of the kind who has given
capitalism a bad name.
2. Scarlett doesnt marry him, ________ giving the plot a whole new dimension.
3. In that scene Rhett _________ her up in his arms and takes her to her bedroom.
4. Perhaps Scarlett has broken his kneecaps, ________!
5. Most of Scarletts squeaks are, ______, audible only to bats.
6. The movie is a _______ sackful of compulsive trash.
7. It is Rhetts kneecaps that seem _________ for the treatment.
8. Her sexual manipulations seem to spring from _______ boredom rather than actual malice.
9. And _______ in the script is just how ill at ease Scarlett is with her role.
10. On that occasion they ________ off the reels and sent the movie on the road again.
11. Could it have been part of the Womens Lib ________?

2. Choose the right word:

1. My old aunts are very ________, Im afraid. You have to be very careful about your manners
around them.
A. strait-jacket B. strait-laced C. tight-laced D. straitened

2. I think he would like to go to bed with Susie. He behaves like a __________ bull around her.
A. whingeing B. tamed C. rampant D. rabid

3. You have a ___________ sense of humour if you can say such a preposterous thing to me!
A. crooked B. bent C. warped D. wry

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4. Oh, come on! Ive heard this old __________ for the tenth time this week. Credit me with
some intelligence, for Gods sake.
A. peach B. apple C. chestnut D. nut

5. The odds were against him in that situation and he was more or less left __________ in the
dark.
A. whistling B. singing C. chirruping D. clamouring

6. I felt hurt and threatened by her reply. Then the other guests started agreeing with her and it
felt as if they were ___________ me.
A. coming on B. closing in on C. hitting on D. coming against

7. There are laws in this country against wife ___________, you know.
A. pounding B. licking C. whooping D. battering

8. Although in his _________ forties, Jim was still a good catch for every woman in town.
A. old B. last C. ripe D. late

9. When prompted to confess, she would shrug her shoulders innocently and cast him a
__________ glance.
A. guileless B. winsome C. penetrating D. deprecatory

10. Look at the tantrums he throws! Hes behaving like a ___________ child!
A. fractious B. diffident C. contrite D. petulant

3. Consider the table below. Match the following list of words with the right entry:
factitious, meretricious, belle, booze, manipulation, epicene, creep, clinch, apogee,
Goodness me!, smell a rat, overt, zilch, come-uppance, grub, it stinks, innuendo.

Outdated words Familiar register Formal register

4*. POLYSEMY: EAR. Translate into English:

1.L-a tras de urechi drept pedeaps pentru nota mic de la biologie. 2. La ct brf a auzit dup
cstorie probabil c i acum i iuie urechile. 3. Rugminile ei nu au fost bgate n seam deloc.
4. Probabil c tie deja, doar e genul care casc urechile bine i e mereu informat. 5. Prieteni!
Atenie v rog. 6. Nu i-a putut crede urechilor cnd a auzit ce voia ea de la el. 7. Bine, dac nu
vrei s ne gndim mpreun la o strategie, o s improvizm ceva pe loc, dup ureche. 8. Ciulete
bine urechile i ascult ce-i spun. 9. Am treab pn peste cap sptmna asta. 10. N-o asculta

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prea atent, dei ea i povestea o ntmplare foarte amuzant. 11. A rs cu gura pn la urechi cnd
a citit articolul din ziar. 12. L-au trimis acas ruinat i umilit. 13. Uite ce urechi clpuge are!

5*. ADJECTIVAL COMPOUNDS AND IDIOMS

a. Fill in the blanks with the right adjective and paraphrase:
1. _______-eared 2. _______-nosed 3. __________-handed 4. ________-headed 5. ________-
necked 6. ________-kneed 7. __________-handed 8. _________-handed blow 9. ________-
minded 10. _________-jawed 11. ________-boned 12. ________-legged 13. __________-lipped
14. ________-minded 15. ________- fisted
b. Paraphrase and use in sentences of your own:
Weak in the head, tight in the neck, long in the tooth, wet behind the ears, high in the instep,
white around the lips, purple in the face, green about the gills, plump in the pocket, right in the
head.

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AN INFORMAL MOVIE REVIEW

SATURDAY 22ND FEB. Last night the film Ghost was on television after the News, and I
decided to watch it, although I had seen it before, with Martin or rather I watched it because I
had seen it before with Martin. It was a surprise hit when it first came out and everybody was
talking about it. We enjoyed it, I recalled, even as we rather despised its slick exploitation of the
supernatural. I remembered only the bare bones of the plot: a young man is murdered in the
street walking home with his girl, and tries to protect her from the conspirators who killed him,
though as a ghost he is invisible and can only communicate with her through a medium. The few
details of the movie that had lodged in my memory were the special effects when characters
died: for instance, the hero gets up from the ground apparently unscathed and only realizes that
hes dead when he sees his distraught girlfriend cradling his own lifeless body in her arms; and
when the baddies die they are immediately set upon by dark gibbering shapes that drag them
screaming off to hell (surprisingly satisfying, that). And I remembered that Whoopi Goldberg
had been very funny in the role of the fraudulent medium who is disconcerted to find herself
genuinely in touch with the spirit world. These things were just as effective the second time
round. What I wasnt prepared for was the way the love story would overwhelm me. Demi
Moore, whom Ive always considered a rather wooden actress, seemed incredibly moving as the
bereaved heroine. When her eyes filled with tears, mine brimmed over. In fact I spent most of the
movie weeping, laughing at Whoopi Goldberg through my tears. I knew in my head that the film
was cheap, sentimental, manipulative rubbish, but it didnt make any difference. I was helpless to
resist, I didnt want to resist, I just wanted to be swamped by the extraordinary flood of emotion
it released. When the ghostly hero reminds the sceptical heroine, through the Whoopi Goldberg
character, of intimate and homely details of their life together that nobody else could possibly
know, and it dawns on Demi Moore that her dead lover really is communicating with her, my
skin prickled with goosepimples. When the hero (Ive already forgotten his name, and that of the
actor who played him) acquires the powers of a poltergeist and uses them to terrify the thug
threatening Demi Moore, I crowed and clapped my hands in glee. And when, in a sublimely silly
scene towards the end, Whoopi Goldberg allows him to inhabit her body so that he can dance
cheek to cheek with Demi Moore to the smoochy tune they made love to at the beginning well,
I almost swooned with vicarious pleasure and longing. [] In a curious way it was a cathartic
experience. (David Lodge Thinks)

A
READING COMPREHENSION
1. Do you think that the text presents a womans point of view or a mans point of view.
Motivate your answer.
2. Have you seen Ghost? What do you think about the movie? In the case you havent, talk
about a movie that is similar to the description provided in the text.
3. Why do you think the person talking had previously despised the slick exploitation of the
supernatural in the movie. Can you think about other movies that fit this description?
4. Why is the scene at the end of the movie described as sublimely silly?
5. Why is the experience of seeing the movie described as a cathartic experience?

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B
VOCABULARY
1. Fill in the blanks with words and phrases from the text:
a) It finally _________ on Demi Moore that her lover was trying to communicate with her.
b) I spent most of the movie weeping or _____________.
c) The few details of the movie that had ____________ were the special effects when characters
died.
d) When Demis eyes filled with tears, mine ______________.
e) I remembered only the _______ of the plot.
f) The hero sees his distraught girlfriend ________ his own lifeless body in her arms.
g) Whoopi is disconcerted to find herself genuinely ________ the spirit world.
h) When the evil characters die they are immediately ________by dark gibbering shapes that
drag them __________ to hell.
i) I just wanted to be ________ by the extraordinary flood of emotion the movie released.
j) I crowed and clapped my hands __________.

2. Choose the right word:

1. When shown the text, she produced a ______ translation of it in record time.
A. easy slick sharp effortless

2. The artist chose the _________ of oil for the portrait he had been commissioned to paint.
B. avenue road means medium

3. I intend to ________ a complaint with the police against my neighbours as soon as possible.
C. wedge put lodge thrust

4. I spotted him hidden in the corner, _______ a twisted splinter in his foot.
D. nursing cradling prying scooping

5. John couldnt take his eyes off the monkeys gathered in the banana tree, _________ at each
other.
E. whimpering simpering gibbering pampering

6. When Jim had stated his opinion, a silence ________ with meaning fell over the audience.
F. distraught fraught laden ridden

7. You are never to speak of the cruel accident that ________ him of his wife and child.
G. bereft rid freed bereaved

8. The basin perched on the table was brimful ________ water.

H. with by in at

9. Go back to your stupid job and your _______ wife, see if I care!
I. homely homily hominy humbly

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10. When she heard his cold voice, she felt a ______ of unease and shivered warily.
J. bump jolt whorl prickle

11. The woman looked at her baby and started _________ to him softly.
K. crowing crooning cooing cackling

12. The new movie that was ________ last month, proved to be an unexpected flop.
L. put out released issued implemented

3*. Translate the following texts, paying attention to the specialized vocabulary used in it:
a) On the vast draught-haunted sound stages of Cincita, with actors, extras, freaks, sycophants
and hangers-on, the by now familiar fauna and flora of Felliniana, seeming to enjoy
absolutely equal status with one another; with the relaxed and negligent, on occasion
infelicitous but always festive and carnivalesque mise en scne of the completed work
tendering the spectator what one cannot help suspecting is a fairly transparent mirror image
of the noisy, fractious, exuberant caravanserai that was the shoot that both preceded and
engendered it; with, above all, the casts and crews unanimistic faith (in the films future, in
the virtues of communal achievement, in the Maestros own genially tyrannical presence)
exuding from every pore of the screen, that Serbian invasion comes to symbolise for me the
contamination of a films textures by the very means and conditions of its production.
b) I videotape films or rent prerecorded tapes, and may divert myself by playing the same
sequence again and again as though I were watching successive takes on the set. I read
Cahiers du Cinma and Sight and Sound and even, for some unfathomable reason, Variety,
that preposterous bible of American showbusiness which journalists tend to cite as
reverently as though it were the Bible itself. I have learned, albeit on an almost subliminal
level, to decipher cinliterate TV commercials full of bogus Bogeys and James Cagney
lookalikes. And, most potently of all, I have visited America America, a metacinematic
experience in itself, a veritable Homerica, an entire continent in Cinerama (of which word
America is a near-anagram), a living road movie, a circuitous cyberspatial tracking-shot by
Wenders. All of which, in a sense, relates to a critical commonplace, that of the cinemas
intertextual and extracurricular discourse. Everyone is a film buff (of sorts) nowadays; in a
period of endemic imagorrhea there truly does exist a literacy and illiteracy of the image.
Cinphilia is currently an essential item in every thinking persons intellectual baggage.
c) At the most ingenuous, infantile level I miss the frisson of feeling totally at ease with a
lexicon to which I never needed to have recourse in a context of professional responsibility
the thrill, in other words, of airily alluding in conversation with my fellows to rough cuts
and reaction shots and mike shadows (I used to fantasise about some B-movie private eye
whose name, appropriately enough, would be Mike Shadow). I miss the sensation, not of
bristling outrage, but rather of complicitous superiority, that I would enjoy when hearing a
journalist mention the fact as he would put it, that the medium has only ever had a handful
of true artists who, it would transpire, were always the same few: in the past, say, Chaplin,
Eisenstein, Bunuel and Truffaut; in the present, Bergman, Kubrick, Woody Allen and
Kurosawa (yes, just about everyone has seen Kagemusha and Ran, but who, other than the
genuine cinphile, has heard of Mizoguchi or Ozu, not to mention Kinoshita or Naruse?)
(Gilbert Adair The Film Set)

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