Andrew Fahey

As someone who loves literature, good story telling, and drama I’ve wanted to engage with Shakespeare in more contemporary and relevant ways for many years. I’ve always found Shakespeare in the original a tad too obsolete and his language slightly rarified to be truly accessible. His dense use of metaphor and allegorical allusion is clever and in many ways beautiful; but given the distance between the use of this language and the standard of English today I have always found Shakespeare a little impenetrable and therefore frustrating to engage with. But, given his profound insights into politics, emotion, and desire his work is eminently open to reinterpretation as well as reproduction. Unfortunately too many modern performances of Shakespeare are purely one or the other: some wild reinterpretation that makes a bawdy caricature out of the original (like Baz Luhrman’s Romeo and Juliet) or else they are such orthodox reproductions one might as well simply read Shakespeare in the original. All of that being said this portrayal of Macbeth held so much promise with a magnificent cast, and captivating cinematography; and yet it felt disappointingly like a giant missed opportunity. While the dialogue of the script has been adapted slightly for film it retains the baroque flamboyance of Shakespeare (already with its many anachronistic and dense turns of phrase coming thick and fast) but filtered through thick Scottish accents and moody, often muttered delivery. The result of which is a barely comprehensible film, without even subtitles to aid the audience. The end result is a frustrating and disappointing cinematic experience. I wanted so much to be gripped by the emotion, and psychological torment that is the beating heart of Macbeth, but I was left suffering through the film with only the hollow enjoyment of beautiful montages. What I would desperately like is a modern “translation” of Shakespeare- something that remains largely faithful to the original, but simply re-contextualises and updates the language of the original to be as immediate and arresting to a modern audience as the original was in its time. I hope that Joel Coen’s soon to be released take on Macbeth is able to achieve this.