The Official Competition at Cannes closed out on Saturday with “Macbeth,” Australian director Justin Kurzel’s new interpretation of William Shakespeare’s classic tale of murder and tragedy, starring Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard. It’s been a long time since we had a truly great Shakespearean movie (Baz Luhrmann’s “Romeo + Juliet” is probably the last, nearly twenty years ago, depending on your feelings on Michael Almereyda’s 2000 modern-day “Hamlet”), and even longer since there was a great version of this particular play: despite being one of the author’s best-known, it’s generally proven resistant to translation.
But as our review revealed, Kurzel’s film manages both feats: it’s a bold take that, while it doesn’t reinvent the wheel, certainly tricks the wheel out with intelligence and visual bravado, and has an engine driven by some furious performances. It’s a very, very different version than ones we’ve seen on screen before, and after our full review, we...
