Object #70 + #71 - Clam Shells / Dagger - Cleopatra (1934) / Macbeth (2015)

Dir. Cecil B. DeMille / Justin Kurzel

Heavy-handedness is easy, subtlety is difficult. True, or not? 

Take one look at Cecil B. DeMille's Cleopatra, marvel at the set construction, costuming, and prop work and it becomes very apparent that something so heavy-handed must have taken a lot of work. DeMille succeeds at bringing to the screen sumptuous visuals, Hollywood constructions packed to the brim with props and extras, and overwrought acting of overwrought scripts. This is his style, and Cleopatra is no different. It's enjoyable on a surface level way, but it's as hollow as the sets themselves. 

In this gaudy sea, moments of subtlety can be found. One excellent bit of staging has Cleopatra (Claudette Colbert) lazing on a chaise lounge, with her lover, Marc Antony (Henry Wilcoxon) at her side, sprawled across the stone steps. DeMille covers the two with the strings of a harp, which a servant plays, his hand almost caressing Cleopatra's chest. We never see Antony and Cleopatra make love, but this is the closest we get, with a subtlety so non-evident everywhere else. 

The initial seduction of Antony for example, is precluded by a scene in which he expresses his thoughts on women aloud with his compatriots, to the tune of "Women, what are they good for?". To anyone with a shred of history education, or even someone who's heard the term Antony & Cleopatra, it's so obvious that this is being ironic for its own sake. In the literal next scene, Antony meets with Cleopatra on her exotic, extravagant barge, where in no short order, he is seduced by her charms. 

How does Cleopatra do this? She presents the wealth of Egypt, by sending a net overboard, and trawling up clams full of peals. Ah, but it isn't that simple. In the net are scantily dressed women, who present the clams to the two. They open the clam shells wide, as Cleopatra monologues about the 'treasure' of the Nile which can be his...do you get it? She throws the pearls to the crowd, who rush to get the treasure, and bids him to do the same, making him complicit in the fun to be had in her land, flaunting the wealth of Egypt, both literally, and metaphorically in her own sexuality. Honestly, it's not terrible as far as visual metaphors go (it's not exactly great either), but more girls show up, dressed in animal furs, play-clawing at the crowd, before eventually performing a dance where they jump through flaming hoops. The camera, just as complicit pans back from this dance over the large rowing oars of her barge, letting the audience enjoy the money shot. The next scene is the harp scene I described above, confirming that they made love.

Note the jewellery....

I'm not actually doing DeMille's heavy-handedness justice but all you need to do is hear the delivery, particularly among the Romans, to realise that this is almost a farce, elevated to the heights of Hollywood by nothing but copious amounts of money. Take the scene, famous from Shakespeare, where Julius Caesar (Warren Williams) is betrayed and murdered by his senators, including, of course, Brutus (Arthur Hohl). Their earlier conspiring has a Brutus who plays it with such laughable dourness that it's almost a comedy. The murder is just as bad, as the famous line is of course quoted, in a production not fit to carry it. 

So to reiterate we have this scene, an almost parody of Caesar's murder, followed by a brief scene of Cleopatra's reaction to the news, and then Marc Antony's wooden dialogue about how he really doesn't like women, like at all, he swears. Honestly he might as well say 'Girls are icky', it'd have the same value. Then - barge seduction, sultry women, pearls, wealth, power. It's so truncated, and devoid of actual human emotion that it's like seeing a kids picture book on screen, where the text is elementary-level, but the pictures have been so fine tuned that you can gawp guilt-free. The clam-shells opening to present Antony with sexual gratification is about as subtle as you can get for films of this time with regards to sex (and actually relatively restrained for a pre-code film), but it's still the type of subtlety that's centre-screen, and supported by scantily dressed women, to really hammer home the message. 

Now since we've mentioned Shakespeare, let's take a look at an adaption that actually manages to not only bring it to the screen with visual aplomb, but with textual and subtextual depth, wringing new interpretations from a piece of literature so well-rung by not only literary critics, stage adaptions, but also esteemed filmmakers such as Polanski, Kurosawa, and Welles. No mean feat, and it puts DeMille to shame. Now of course, DeMille only wanted to make the 'Hollywood' version of a famous 'work' of history - that of Cleopatra. Kurzel's purpose was to spin the classic Scottish play in a more intimate way, one in which film can succeed where stage cannot. 

His purpose is clear from the off, as we do not open on the three witches, but on Macbeth (Michael Fassbender), and his wife (Marion Cotillard) laying to rest their young boy. This is a fundamental focus for the rest of the film, and this loss haunts the two of them, and haunts your thoughts as a viewer, making you reappraise the text you've likely heard many a-time in the past. Children are found throughout the film, reminding Macbeth in particular of his loss and grief - take for example a shot of children playing after he exits the tent after his 'discovery' of the murdered King Duncan (David Thewlis), which frames his action against the children's innocence, and the innocence he has lost, replaced in both he and Lady Macbeth's lives with ambition for power. Later in the film he, in a fit of paranoia, has the wife and children of Macduff (Sean Harris) hunted down through a forest, as she screams that they are innocent of any crime. He uses them to send a message, tying them to posts outside the castle, shouting of the prophecy that no man born of a woman can kill him, and burning them alive as warning. 

Some, like Macduff's children, Banquo's (Paddy Considine) boy, and Malcolm (Jack Reynor), the son of King Duncan and heir to the throne, are apparent in the original text, but Kurzel chooses to place emphasis on each of these in detail, as well as including Macbeth's dead child to open. Of particular note is a recurring emphasis on a young solider (Scot Greenan) who perishes in the opening battle of the film. Greenan's distinctive features, and muddied warpaint ensure that he's well-remembered from the off, as we see Macbeth strap the boy's sword to his hand, haul him to his feet during the battle, and finally place rocks over the eyes of his corpse, just as he did to his son minutes earlier in the film, linking the two. This boy is a spectre which haunts Macbeth throughout the film, another uniqueness to this film, rather than the classic spectral haunting of Banquo at the feast, which is also retained. 

The dagger which Macbeth sees before him, presented as a mental apparition in the Polanski version and in numerous RSC adaptions, normally hangs in the air, leading him to Duncan so that he may commit the foul deed. Here however, the boy appears holding the dagger, and so the dagger appearing before Macbeth is intertwined with the haunting image of the boy who he failed to save, which naturally is a surrogate for his own child. By using this young solider, rather than the image of his own child, there is a subtle subtext of tangible guilt which is associated with the horrific battles against traitors of the land. Both Fassbender and Kurzel are explicit in their presentation of Macbeth as a more modern figure, spurred to greedy ambition by witches which may be apparitions of PTSD and grief - and so the 'scorpions' which fill Macbeth's mind are rooted in our modern interpretations of mental illness.  

    

One of the highlights of this adaption is the stark re-interpretation of the "Out damned spot!" soliloquy of Lady Macbeth. It removes the plot-based purpose of the classic text, where her sleepwalking speech makes evident both her and Macbeth's guilt in Duncan's murder to staff of the castle. Instead, it has Lady Macbeth, in a stark white gown, present her guilt just off-camera, in a bare church, in a village abandoned due to her husbands poor running of the land. The church, warmly lit for Lady Macbeth's first 'solo' scene earlier in the film, already creates as stark a visual contrast as possible in its current condition. The whispering delivery of Cotillard contrasts to the passion-filled performances which litter your mind from past portrayals, making this unique to Cotillard and unique in the way only a film close-up can do.

The soliloquy ends by revealing Lady Macbeth's young child, absent-mindedly playing in front of her, causing you to reappraise past text, as not a sleepwalking admission of guilt, but one directed at the child whom she feels she has let down, and who stands in her mind as a bastion of innocence. As a mother, this is how Lady Macbeth's guilt is manifest, whereas Macbeth's is heavy with the young soldier of war. She commands: "Wash your hands. Put on your nightgown. Look not so pale. To bed, to bed. (...) Come, come, give me your hand! What's done cannot be undone." 

Previously, commands to herself, to wash the daggers and the bloodstained guilt from her hands, but now, this meaning is paired with a tearful, heartfelt urge for the normalcy of the mother/child relationship. It's heartbreaking, and Cotillard herself in behind-the-scene interviews calls this addition of Kurzel's 'genius', as it solidified how she should perform the scene, not to herself in madness, but out of grief for her child. It's telling that Kurzel's seemingly bold-for-boldness' sake addition of a fourth witch is not done lightly, as it takes the form of a child, again intertwining the lost child as central to the witches, themselves the originators and spur to both Macbeth and Lady Macbeth's mad urge for power. Indeed, following the Damned Spot scene, Lady Macbeth witnesses the witches, and they hold in their hand a baby, almost suggesting that in her mind, she willingly dies to be reunited with innocence again, in the shape of a young child. 

Compare this to Cleopatra, who near the end of her film proclaims: "I am no longer a Queen, I am a woman". It's borderline insulting, that a film centred around Cleopatra is dominated by Roman politicking, at the expense of rich scenes featuring Cleopatra herself, rather than in addition to. For a film of her namesake, she is underserved, always subservient in performance with male-dominated scenes. She becomes "a woman" and nothing else, in dialogue as leaden as the message it promotes - gone is the not-so-subtle seduction, and in its place a domesticated woman, no longer a queen, only a wife, to a failure of an emperor. I'm cheating somewhat as Lady Macbeth is one of the greatest female characters in literature, but in comparison her royalty and motherhood are heavily intertwined here, creating subtleties of performance and interpretation found nowhere in the work of DeMille, and nowhere else in other Macbeth adaptions. We can only hope that Cleopatra gets not only the script she deserves, but one which can give that performer a bevy of subtlety, which embraces her royalty and sex, rather than denounce both.