Macbeth (2015), dir. Justin Kurzel

Marion Cotillard as Lady Macbeth

"With Michael Fassbender as Macbeth, its gimmick is there is no gimmick: according to historical record, the setting is the Scotland of 1057, a place of cruel violence where crowns are made from bone and dogs lap at the blood of kings.

Of course, the thing about Macbeth is that...its menace endures. To [director Justin] Kurzel, making it felt like kids playing with a Ouija board. “After 18 takes of Marion doing “Come you spirits …” the atmosphere gets pretty weird. Once you start invoking certain things, it is like you’re getting close to … evil, really.”

Does he believe in evil? “Yeah. I do. I think there’s a precipice that we stand on looking down on it, and it’s paper thin. We know we can’t come back if we jump, but we’re drawn to it anyway. That’s why Macbeth is so popular. The madness.”

Act I, Scene 5


Come, you spirits
That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,
And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full
Of direst cruelty! make thick my blood;
Stop up the access and passage to remorse,
That no compunctious visitings of nature
Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between
The effect and it! Come to my woman's breasts,
And take my milk for gall, you murdering ministers,
Wherever in your sightless substances
You wait on nature's mischief! Come, thick night,
And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell,
That my keen knife see not the wound it makes,
Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark,
To cry 'Hold, hold!'