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MACBETH
Directed by: Geoffrey Wright.
Produced by: Martin Fabinyi.
Written by: Wright & Victoria Hill, adapted from the play by William Shakespeare.
Director of Photography: Will Gibson.
Edited by: Jane Usher.
Music by: John Clifford White.
Released by: Union Square Media/Truly Indie.
Country of Origin: Australia. 109 min. Not Rated.
With: Sam Worthington, Victoria Hill, Lachy Hulme, Gary Sweet & Steve Bastoni.

Have you ever heard the lame joke about the ambitious director who said, “I want to do something truly avant-garde – I know, I’ll do a Shakespearean play set in the time period in which it was written”? Maybe you have. Maybe you haven’t. But it’s pretty clear that director Geoffrey Wright hasn’t.

Instead of vying for the Scottish throne, Wright’s adaptation finds Macbeth (Sam Worthington) vying to be crowned a drug lord, somehow turning Macbeth into a gaudy, drug-infused gangster melodrama whose adrenaline runs dry. Sometimes a time shift can be successful. Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet and Michael Almereyda’s urbanized Hamlet are both testaments to modernizing Shakespeare. Even the bicycles and top hats of Jean-Christophe Averty’s Midsummer Night’s Dream (Le Songe d'une nuit d'été, 1969) managed to add to rather than needlessly distract from the source material.

Maybe the failure is in the acting. It seems that almost the entire cast has succumbed to the same disease: the belief that speaking slowly with many dramatic pauses is the only way to imbue life and clarity into dusty Shakespearean verse. Producer Victoria Hill, who also plays Lady Macbeth, was stricken with a severe case at the time of filming.

Characters who appear onscreen for less than three minutes (out of a total 109), like Banquo (Steve Bastoni) and “Malcolm’s Girl” (Edwina Wren), speak their lines without the same prolonged, hammy breathiness as everyone else, but their brief scenes only make the rest of the cast even more unbearable.

Some critics have praised the film’s cinematography and overall look, but that’s not something you’re going to read here. I can’t imagine a more uncomfortable, claustrophobic, and needlessly modernized series of visuals, from the overuse of fog machines to the hipster haircuts. Although the film is an Australian production, you will never see a more CW rendition of Shakespeare (One Tree Hill). Except these actors and actresses are older, but somehow appear even more ill-fitting in their outlandish designer clothes and gaudy jewelry. Zachary Jones
July 6, 2007