Macbeth (2018): film, 121 minutes; director Kit Monkman; writers Monkman, Judith Buchanan, Thomas Mattinson; featuring Mark Rowley, Akiya Henry, Al Weaver, Charlie Hamblett, Charles Mnene

Something about Macbeth encourages stage and film productions to experiment with William Shakespeare's play. The Scottish drama has been performed in a range of period costumes and almost as often in modern dress. It's been done as a gangster movie, a martial arts display, and a religious drama. The plot has been placed in feudal Japan, fascist Italy, vodou-drenched Haiti—and sometimes medieval Scotland.

But the 2018 film may be the strangest production yet.

Its most intriguing feature is its appearance. It seems to take place on multiple levels of a darkness-shrouded globe (harking back to Shakespeare's Globe theatre?) with actors appearing out of nowhere. They spout their lines on vacant stages, before green-screen images, or alongside projections of what seem to be silent movies. Critics have found it either visually stunning or detracting from the play's substance. I find it both—visually arresting but also claustrophobic at times. But maybe this is what the filmmakers are going for.

Further moves in the postmodern direction are the breaking up of familiar scenes and rearrangement of hallowed dialogue, which you can also take as either confusing or exploring new ways of understanding this play. After all, Macbeth is considered one of Shakespeare's most difficult plays partly due to its often ragged dialogue and fragmented dramatic arcs—not to mention its characters' fractured minds. A bit of post-modernism from before the modern era?

Trailer for 2015's epic retelling of Shakespeare's Macbeth.

The cast are a young, mostly unknown crowd in contrast to the weathered stage veterans you usually get in such theatrical productions. Scottish actor Mark Rowley seems at first particularly callow as Macbeth (my calculation has him at about twenty-eight during filming), but he can be credited for maturing into the role by the play's—and his character's—end.

He's helped by the fiery performance of British actor Akiya Henry who is as erotic, wicked and mad as any Lady Macbeth I've seen, and more so than most.

The avant-garde approach of this production doesn't spotlight supporting actors very well—it can be hard to work out how their characters fit into the story—though one who does stand out is Al Weaver (best known perhaps as Leonard on Grantchester) as a compelling Banquo.

All in all, not a satisfying interpretation of Macbeth, but a disturbingly interesting one.

— Eric

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