Michael Fassbender

MACBETH: Shakespeare’s study of ambition, more medieval, more psychological and sexier

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Marion Cotillard and Michael Fassbender in MACBETH
Marion Cotillard and Michael Fassbender in MACBETH

Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard star in Justin Kurzeil’s take on Shakespeare’s Macbeth – sexier and more psychological than most versions and very medieval.

In interviews, Fassbender has said that his Macbeth suffers from  battlefield PTSD.   As we see in this version of Macbeth, medieval warfare consisted of muddy guys rushing each other to hack, stab and bludgeon each other to death.  Mostly, it seems, to hack.  The soldiers wear facial warpaint that looks like it would if smeared on by men just before a battle.

Macbeth comes already damaged.  Unlike Richard III, a Shakespearean villain who is just deliciously evil to the core, Macbeth is troubled, a man whose “dreams abuse the curtain of sleep.”  But, as he is haunted by his own atrocities (especially killing his most loyal friend Banquo after Macbeth has already obtained the crown), Macbeth decompensates.

Lady Macbeth is the prototype of social climbers and strivers, pushing her hubbie to the forefront no matter the requisite carnage.  Cotillard’s Lady Macbeth uses sex to persuade him on a course of action, and he exhales a post-orgasmic “settled” in agreement with her plot.  After all, what’s sexier than power?  Hearing Macbeth’s “I have done the deed” gets Lady Macbeth breathing really hard.

Both of them have fits in which they wander the windswept highlands in their sleepwear.  Even with her over-the-top ruthlessness,  Lady Macbeth starts out more stable and functional, trying valiantly to distract the court from gauging Macbeth’s ever more tottering sanity.  But finally, the totality of their misdeeds becomes too heavy for even her to bear.  Fassbender and Cotillard are excellent.  So are Paddy Considine as Banquo and Sean Harris as Macduff.

All of the classic Macbethisms are here – “the be all and end all”, “out, damn spot!”, “unsex me here”, “the poisoned chalice” and “vaulting ambition”.  That last term – the central subject of Macbeth – is a marvel of precision because ambition requires one to vault over and past other people.  Ruthlessness is acting without or despite empathy for others.  Those who are not sociopaths can be haunted by their own vaulting acts of ruthlessness.  Kurzeil asks us to make that assessment of the two lead characters.

I really like Shakespeare movies because there are ways to advance Shakepeare’s stories that you just can’t do on stage.  Realistic medieval filth is one.  Large battle scenes, partially in slow motion is another.  And Macbeth and Banquo are able to quietly reflect on their foretold futures while bedding down on the battlefield, not while pacing the stage and speaking loud enough for a live audience to hear.  The soundtrack is filled with reedy drones that evoke bagpipes and covey dread and moral bleakness. (See my Best Shakespeare Movies – I’ll be adding this movie to that list.)

In just his second feature, Australian director Justin Kurzeil consistently make superb choices. Instead of novelties, the witches are spooky and mostly silent witnesses to the story; when Macbeth’s fortune is complete, they turn silently and melt away. I prefer the traditional way that Birnam Wood comes to Dunsinane Castle over Kurzeil’s solution, but’s that’s just me.  The final shots are wholly original and leave us with a remind of the historical consequences yet to come.

Kurzeil’s Macbeth is well-crafted and thought-provoking, and one of the very best Shakespeare movies.

 

12 Years a Slave: unsparing, I repeat, unsparing

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Chiwetel Ejiafor and Michael Fassbender in 12 YEARS A SLAVE

12 Years a Slave is an unsparing, I repeat, unsparing depiction of American slavery.  It tells the true story of Soloman Northup, a comfortable Syracuse, New York, free man of color who was kidnapped in 1841 and sold into slavery in the South, where he languished for twelve years.  At first, Northup is bewildered and can’t believe what is happening to him, but he is quickly immersed into the horrors of slavery, and remains focused on his own survival in hopes that eventually he can be rescued.  As he is traded from slave-owner to slave-owner, we witness his experience.  All of the slave-owners are brutal in their own ways, but the last one is also a psychotic sadist (Michael Fassbender).  As a result, almost all of 12 Years a Slave’s 134 minutes is the beating, whipping, raping and killing of (and commerce in) enslaved people.  It’s an unrelentingly tough watch.

The fine British actor Chiwetel Ejiofor (Dirty Pretty Things) plays Northup, and his outstanding performance carries the film.   The other startling performance is by Fassbender (who previously teamed with director Steve McQueen for Shame), whose demented role would be lusted after by the likes of Christolph Walz and Gary Oldman.  The acting is uniformly excellent, but I’ll also call out Sarah Paulson as a bitter plantation mistress and Garret Dillahunt (Winter’s Bone, Assassination of Jesse James yada yada, Looper, Killing Them Softly) as a morally weak White trash loser.

12 Years a Slave’s Metacritic rating has shot to an atmospheric 97 because critics are gushing about the groundbreakingly ultra-realistic (and thus horrifying) depiction of slavery by a Hollywood movie (in contrast to the decades of bowdlerized portrayals by the likes of Gone with the Wind).  Give the credit to screenwriter John Ridley (who wrote the story in Three Kings).

Yes, 12 Years a Slave is a landmark historical movie. Yes, it is well-made and centered around a superb leading performance.  But you should know that it is a very grim viewing experience.

DVD of the Week: Haywire

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One of the first 2012 releases, Haywire is a rockem sockem spy action thriller by Steven Soderbergh, starring Gina Carano.  I was not familiar with Gina Carano, who is an accomplished star of mixed martial arts.  Haywire is a vehicle seeking to launch her as an action film star.  And why not, for she is attractive (with “real girl”, not Hollywood, looks), well-endowed and can kick ass?  She can, after all, kick ass for real, not just pretend to in a movie.

As an actor, Carano is plenty good enough.  She’s way better than Chuck Norris, Jackie Chan and the Rock, and is at least as good as Schwarzenegger.  And, when she beats up a swat team, it is believable (and fun).

Soderbergh is always interesting, as he moves between high brow/arty (sex lies and videotape, The Good German) and lowbrow/popular (Ocean’s Twelve, Contagion).  Here he takes an inexperienced leading woman and an unremarkable story and makes the most of it.  It’s a good watch.

Soderbergh delivers fast pacing and great locations (Barcelona, Dublin, New Mexico).  Soderbergh and Carano benefit from a top rate cast:  Michael Douglas, Ewan McGregor, Michael Fassbender, Antonio Banderas, Michael Angarano and Bill Paxton.  Overall, it’s good entertainment and, for once,  I’m actually looking forward to the sequels.

Haywire: an action star is born

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One of the first 2012 releases, Haywire is a rockem sockem spy action thriller by Steven Soderbergh, starring Gina Carano.  I was not familiar with Gina Carano, who is an accomplished star of mixed martial arts.  Haywire is a vehicle seeking to launch her as an action film star.  And why not, for she is attractive (with “real girl”, not Hollywood, looks), well-endowed and can kick ass?  She can, after all, kick ass for real, not just pretend to in a movie.

As an actor, Carano is plenty good enough.  She’s way better than Chuck Norris, Jackie Chan and the Rock, and is at least as good as Schwarzenegger.  And, when she beats up a swat team, it is believable (and fun).

Soderbergh is always interesting, as he moves between high brow/arty (sex lies and videotape, The Good German) and lowbrow/popular (Ocean’s Twelve, Contagion).  Here he takes an inexperienced leading woman and an unremarkable story and makes the most of it.  It’s a good watch.

Soderbergh delivers fast pacing and great locations (Barcelona, Dublin, New Mexico).  Soderbergh and Carano benefit from a top rate cast:  Michael Douglas, Ewan McGregor, Michael Fassbender, Antonio Banderas, Michael Angarano and Bill Paxton.  Overall, it’s good entertainment and, for once,  I’m actually looking forward to the sequels.

 

Shame: sex all the time without any fun

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Michael Fassbender plays a fit, handsome guy who has a way with women, a well-paying job and a Manhattan apartment with a glorious view.  He is also a sex addict – someone who is compelled to think about sex and to have sex constantly.  His life is filled with masturbation, Internet porn, magazine porn, live sex chats, hookers and the odd quickie.   At home, at the office and out on the town.  He doesn’t seem to enjoy any of it.

For the rest of us, sex is the expression of passion and/or the satisfaction of lust.  For this guy, it is just something that he is driven to do, like some people chain smoke.  When he tells a woman that his longest relationship was four months long, you just know that it was really four days.  It’s very telling that the one time he can have sex resulting from a normal attraction, his plumbing fails him.

His sister, played by Carey Mulligan, moves in uninvited.  She is an emotional basket case, with a history of self-cutting, suicide attempts, hospitalizations and a trail of too easy sex and loser boyfriends.  For some reason not made explicit, this brother and sister are quite damaged.

Shame is a remarkable portrait of a sick, sick guy, and is centered on a brave and able performance by Fassbender.  Still this portrait is only a snapshot.  We are left wondering how he got this way and how will he navigate the rest of his life?

DVD of the Week: Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

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In this 1979 miniseries version of the classic John le Carre spy novel, there is a Soviet mole in the highest echelon of British intelligence.  It could be anyone except George Smiley, whom the other top spies have pushed out to pasture.  Smiley, in one of Alec Guinness’ greatest performances, begins a deliberate hunt to unmask the double agent.  Guinness is joined by a superb cast that includes Ian Richardson, Patrick Stewart, Ian Bannen and Sian Phillips.  It’s 290 minutes of pressure-packed whodunit.

The Labor Day weekend is a great opportunity to watch the old master spy drilling down through the characters of his former peers to expose the mole – one of the best mysteries ever on film.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy has been remade into a much shorter theatrical version that will open in the US on November 18.  This new film version will also feature a top tier cast – Gary Oldman, Colin Firth, Ralph Fiennes, Michael Fassbender, Ciaran Hinds, Benedict Cumberbatch, Toby Jones and Stephen Rea.   The trailer is at Movies I’m Looking Forward To.

Other recent DVD picks have been Poetry, Queen to Play, Kill the Irishman and The Music Never Stopped.

DVD of the Week: Fish Tank

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A damaged and angry young woman from the British lower class has the second-worst mother in recent films (after Mo’Nique’s role in Precious).  She dreams of dancing her way out of the neighborhood in a talent contest.  Then her mother brings home a new boyfriend who kindles new feelings in the teen.  This development culminates in a scene where she dances to the Bobby Womack version of California Dreamin‘ while the audience holds its breath.

In her first film role, Katie Jarvis plays the girl; Jarvis was discovered by the filmmakers during a sidewalk argument with her boyfriend that convinced them that she could muster the sustained rage (and foul mouth) required by the role.  Michael Fassbender is excellent as the mother’s new boyfriend.

It’s on my list of Best Movies of 2010 – So Far.