MACBETH
Director: Geoffrey Wright Stars: Sam Worthington, Victoria Hill, Lachy Hulme, Gary Sweet, Steve Bastoni, Mick Molloy, Rel Hunt, Jonny Pasvolsky, Damian Walshe-Howling, Kate Bell, Miranda Nation, Chloe Armstrong
Reviewed by GREG KING
Something bland this way comes?
There have been many film versions of Shakespeare’s most bloodthirsty play, including Toshiro Mifune’s classic Japanese version Throne Of Blood, but Roman Polanski’s blood soaked 1971 version of Macbeth remains the best screen adaptation. Local director Geoffrey Wright (Romper Stomper, Metal Skin, etc) attempts to update Macbeth in much the same way that Baz Luhrmann tried to make Shakespeare relevant and contemporary for today’s audiences, with his spectacularly kinetic version of Romeo And Juliet.
Whereas Luhrmann crammed the screen with flashy visuals and visceral delights, a couple of popular hunky stars, and a modern soundtrack, Wright sets his Macbeth against the contemporary background of a violent power struggle for control of Melbourne’s underworld. Given recent events, this setting gives the film an unexpected and almost prophetic relevance. Wright retains the familiar themes of revenge and the corrupting influence of sex and power, as well as the original language of the play. However, he incorporates contemporary touches like high-powered weaponry, cars and modern costumes into the scenario. However, this film lacks the energy, imagination and dynamic visual flourishes of Luhrmann’s film. Some elements do not completely work, and the old fashioned dialogue, spoken in its original iambic pentameter form, often sounds forced in this modern context.
Sam Worthington (Bootmen, etc) plays Macbeth as a low-level mobster in the employ of gang lord Duncan (Gary Sweet, with a hideous blonde wig). After a shootout involving a rival gang, Macbeth is promoted to a favourable position and given control of a local club. But he grows even more ambitious, and, driven on by the predictions of a trio of teenage nymphets, enlists his wife’s help to further cement his position. After a dinner held in his honour, Macbeth brutally murders Duncan and frames his bodyguards for the crime. Former allies turn against each other in a frenzied struggle for power, and the violence and cycle of bloody revenge escalates.
The sets are overwhelmingly bathed in shades of red, which is symbolic of the blood spilled. Wright also uses handheld cameras in an attempt to bring some energy to some of the more static scenes, but this is an unsettling and disconcerting artifice. Worthington has a brooding presence, but he lacks the necessary ruthlessness to make a convincing Macbeth, while Victoria Hill (the upcoming docu-drama Hunt Angels, etc) brings a surprising vulnerability to her Lady Macbeth, who is typically portrayed unsympathetically as a hard-nosed villain of the piece. Wright has assembled a solid supporting cast of local actors to round out the cast, inlcuidng Mick Molloy, who is effectively cast against type as a ruthless assassin.
Ultimately, though, this fairly violent contemporary take on Macbeth is a noble but flawed effort from an ambitious director who always aims high.
**1/2
Reviewed by PETER MALONE
In the early 1990s, Geoffrey Wright made a name for himself for that very energetic portrait of racism and neo-nazism in Melbourne, Romper Stomper. He followed it up with another energetic film about cars, youth and the western suburbs of Melbourne, Metal Skin. And then he went to Hollywood where he did not have great success, directing the youth slasher thriller, Cherry Falls, in the late 1990s.
Now he is back on familiar ground and has decided to follow the Baz Luhrman lead of bringing Shakespeare to the wide audience by re-locating it in the present. He has opted for Macbeth.
The text is there, although pruned and some of the soliloquies are done as voiceovers, especially moving ‘Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow…’ to the end of the play while omitting ‘full of sound and fury signifying nothing’. Perhaps Wright and his co-adaptor, Victoria Hill, wanted it to signify something and not nothing.
So, the action is set amongst the drug-dealing gangs of inner city Melbourne. The text still uses the language of kings and thanes, but the film has guns and knives in the Luhrman vein. While the world of gangsters seems a suitable one for this king of violent drama, it does not provide us with a tragic hero as Shakespeare does. This Macbeth is an adventurer, a thug, a criminal who does not have a tragic flaw. Rather, he is corrupt and corruptible, ambitious, greedy and power-hungry, even if he wavers at times and is less single-minded than his wife.
Sam Worthington’s performance might be considered rather slight in many ways but he probably is embodying the director’s vision of this weak, coerced and, ultimately, frantic gangster. By contrast, Victoria Hill (the co-writer) is initially icy and focused, using Macbeth and ready to step in smear Duncan’s guards with blood when Macbeth loses his nerve after his repeated slashing of Duncan. But, with Macbeth having fits as he sees Banquo’s ghost at the banquet, she starts to crack, washes the damned spot and eventually kills herself in a bloodstained bath.
Gary Sweet and Lachy Hulme are Duncan and Macduff, mob leaders who give a cynical tone to Shakespeare’s picture of the realm of Scotland. The three witches are dressed as mischievous schoolgirls and graffiti writers at the opening but later use the tradition that the witches were not old hags but young and naked women (which makes Lady Macbeth with her topless washing and wringing of her hands also a witch).
Modern equivalents are intriguing for those who wonder how the bard can be updated: tv monitors, mobile phones, motor bikes, cocaine, and a logging company called Birnam bringing its lorry load of logs, wood, to Macbeth’s mansion, Dunsinane.
A British reviewer commented on the strange accents – but, if you are going to do an Australian contemporary adaptation, this is how Macbeth and his crowd would sound.
An interesting experiment that should please experimenters but not die hard devotees.