A well-told tale and riveting performances

FAMILIARITY breeds contentment when it comes to Shakespeare, and Macbeth is right up there with the best of the Bard. The story of how a noble warrior - spurred by his wife's vaulting ambition, his own poisonous thoughts about the throne and the cryptic prophesies of three "weird women" - comes to grief is an instruction manual on how to mess things up when the world is at your feet. It is no tale told by an idiot, for sure.

Australian director Justin Kurzel's adaptation of Macbeth is no slouch either, moving with hypnotic grace, power and the sort of searing visual intensity that only close-ups (and super slo-mo) on the big screen can provide. Many scenes take place in the open, on a foggy Scottish plain or a wide, windswept beach, in stark contrast to the stifling insecurities roiling the mind of the title character.

The film, the first cinematic Macbeth since Roman Polanski's 1971 version, was written by Jacob Koskoff, Michael Lesslie and Todd Louiso and starts, alarmingly enough, with a shot that lingers on the face of a dead infant. Macbeth (Michael Fassbender) and Lady Macbeth (Marion Cotillard) are in pain as they conduct their child's funeral rite: it's a tragedy that has plenty to do with their subsequent actions.