Macbeth

Justin Kurzel keeps most of the text and rebuilds the rest with the camera. It opens at the funeral of the Macbeths’ child; the dagger is handed over by the ghost of a boy soldier; Macduff’s household burns at the stake while Lady Macbeth watches. The largest departure is at the end. Birnam Wood does not walk: Macduff sets it alight and advances behind the smoke, meeting the prophecy that way. In the last shot Fleance takes Macbeth’s sword and runs into that smoke. Natalie Portman was attached as Lady Macbeth and left over scheduling, her directing debut colliding with the shoot; Marion Cotillard replaced her. The seven week shoot was not confined to Scotland: Bamburgh Castle in Northumberland with almost 200 extras, Quiraing on Skye, Ely Cathedral in Cambridgeshire, Hankley Common in Surrey. Jacqueline Durran built the costumes from the Tilke, a 1920s folk dress encyclopaedia. It competed for the Palme d’Or and drew six British Independent Film Award nominations; the cinematographer Adam Arkapaw took the American Society of Cinematographers Spotlight Award, shared with Son of Saul. A good fit if you want the reading carried by image and cutting while the verse stays. Not for viewers needing the lines to land on first hearing; reviewers kept returning to the muttered delivery and accents.