MACBETH

Australia, 2006, 109 minutes, Colour.
Sam Worthington, Victoria Hill, Lachy Hulme, Gary Sweet, Steve Bastoni, Mick Molloy, John Molloy, Mat Doran, Damian Walshe- Howling.
Directed by Geoffrey Wright.

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.

1.The Scottish play? Popularity? The many versions? Updates? Australian setting?

2.The production values, the Australian settings, Melbourne gangland, the nights, clubs, drug deals, the mansions? Costumes and décor? The red, the dark, the lurid? The musical score?

3.The quality of the update? The setting, the characters, the voice-over of the soliloquies? The shifting of text? The pruning of the text? The Australian accent and recitation? Guns and knives, weapons? Contemporary clothes? Images such as Birnam Wood and the logs? The house of Dunsinane? The witches in school uniforms, later without them? The mirrors, smoke? The television monitors, mobile phones …?

4.The camerawork, hand-held, continual motion, the close-ups? The violence, the verve?

5.Gangland, the bosses – and no nobility, no honour among thieves? Not men of honour? The issue of whether this version was a tragedy or not? Macbeth as a flawed but noble character? Rather a corrupt and corruptible character? Deaths, greed, lust, power?

6.The witches, the schoolgirls and the suggestion of perverse sexuality? Their mischief and the graffiti? The prophecies? Seeing them later, the nudity (and Lady Macbeth’s bare-breasted soliloquy as making her a witch)? The spells, the lust, the foursome? The refusal to elaborate the prophecy about Macbeth? Macduff?

7.The opening, the deals, trust and the guards, the shootout between the gangs, Macbeth as an observer? His involvement? The acclaim? Duncan making him Lord of Cawdor? The ritual ceremony?

8.Macbeth at the club, Duncan and his sons, the various friends? Malcolm? Banquo, Macduff? The enjoyment, the victories? The decision about the visit?

9.Macbeth going home, Lady Macbeth at home? Her snorting cocaine? Strong woman, not kissing her husband? Macbeth and his strength and weakness? Decision and indecision? Ambition and unwillingness to follow it? Flat and not noble? Not a hero? Ordinary, flawed? The discussions with his wife, the plan? The welcome to Duncan and their being two-faced? The drinking, the departures? Duncan and his going to bed, the guards? Macbeth and his urge, the blood spattering and the brutal killing, his refusal to return to the corpses? Lady Macbeth, her smearing the guards? The knocking at the door in the early morning, the cleaning of themselves, washing away the blood, answering the door, going through the motions of shock, Macbeth shooting the guards? The interpretation of his behaviour – noble, passionate? Malcolm and his girlfriend, their waking, fleeing, fearing to be blamed, being blamed?

10. Macbeth and his becoming king, his life as king, socialising, satisfied? The murderers, his orders for the killing of Banquo? The bike ride, Fleance, his escaping? The brutality of Banquo’s death? The banquet, Banquo’s ghost in the mirror, Macbeth and his fits, Lady Macbeth trying to smooth over the situation, her excuses? Macbeth and his imagining Banquo strangling him?

11.The plotters, Macduff and his going away to the boat? The various lords? The murderers and their visit to Macduff’s wife, the brutality of the death of her son, her own death?

12.Lady Macbeth, the change, her dreams, the “Out, damned spot” …? The nurse, her presence in the household, the observation? Telling Macbeth? The attempts at washing – and her death in the bath?

13.The poor club, the meetings, the discussions about the death, the murderer, Fleance? The plan against Macbeth? Birnam Wood and the logs, driving to Dunsinane?

14.Macbeth, his preparing for the attack, waiting, watching? The build-up to the confrontation? The shootout? Macduff and the revelation about his birth? Macbeth, wounded, going to the bed, lying beside Lady Macbeth – and the final soliloquy of “Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow”?

15.The restoration of order in the gangland world, the voice-over – and the final soliloquy?

16.The respect for the text, the poetry of the text, the additions – especially the Thane of Cawdor and his nobility in leaving the world, the recitation of the Our Father? The musical score and the text?

17.This film as another version, a contemporary interpretation of Shakespeare – and the relevance of Shakespeare and his issues to the contemporary world?