From Justin Kurzel’s Macbeth to Orson Welles & Joss Whedon: Directors Love the Bard

Finally ready to meet U.S. audiences is Justin Kurzel’s brutal Macbeth, a modern perspective on the Scottish play starring Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard in two of their most visceral and intense roles to date. It opens today, December 4, and as we've written, it's one of the most impressive Shakespeare adaptations in ages. (You can also read our interview with the film's producer, Iain Canning, here.) Though Macbeth is only Kurzel’s second film after his merciless The Snowtown Murders,

How Macbeth‘s Producer Brought the Rogue Adaptation to the Screen

Though Justin Kurzel’s Macbeth isn’t necessarily the kind of adaptation that promises to satisfy strict Bard purists, it may be one of the more accessible and artful adaptations committed to the screen. A measured melodrama, graphic western and disturbing horror film wrapped in a neat Shakespearean package, this Macbeth for a new age stars Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard as the titular Lord and Lady. Treading the well-worn story of greed and loss with newly thoughtful footsteps,

Justin Kurzel’s Macbeth is the Most Heartfelt Horror Film Ever Made

The story of Macbeth is certainly no stranger to adaptation. In fact, the Scottish play belongs to an impressive tradition of auteurist variation, including Orson Welles’ notoriously troubled 1948 production, Roman Polanski’s 1971 film and Kurosawa’s well-loved  in 1957.

Any Shakespearean adaptation carries with it piles of textual and philosophical baggage, requiring not only a new spin on a well-worn story but a justification for a new iteration.

Watch Michael Fassbender as Macbeth Face the Three Witches

This is the moment when things begin to change inside Macbeth (Michael Fassbender). Having dutifully served as a general to King Duncan (David Thewlis), killing the traitor Macdonwald in a fierce battle with Macdonwald’s rebel forces, Macbeth comes upon three figures in the gloom after the battle. These are the three witches who first put the thought in Macbeth's head that it is he, not King Duncan, who will be the Thane of Cowdor and King of Scotland.

Michael Fassbender & Marion Cotillard are Electric in Macbeth Trailer

Some roles are cast so well you cannot imagine another person playing them—in Justin Kurzel’s Macbeth, the two leads fit this phenomenon perfectly. Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard as Macbeth and Lady Macbeth in this decidedly dark (even for Macbeth) take on Shakespeare’s tale of a man destroyed by ambition and desire.

Kurzel places these iconic characters in a viscerally evoked Scotland torn apart by war.