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Justin Kurzel, a director best known for his chilling depiction of a series of murders in Snowtown (2011), has brought his slow-paced, atmospheric, and graphically violent style to Macbeth. Kurzel chooses to set his version of the Scottish Play in Medieval Scotland, transferring Shakespeare’s Early Modern English to thick Scottish accents, which the international cast perform admirably. Adjusting the high aristocratic drama to the wooden huts and misty moors of Scotland, this adaptation taps deeply into the violent heart of the original play, while abandoning some of its other complexities in the process.

The world of Kurzel’s Macbeth is immediately established as one of brutality and death. The two wordless opening scenes do not appear in the original script: the funeral of Macbeth’s son (whose existence is only suggested in the text) and the battle with the traitor MacDonwald. The sombre cremation and the savage battle that follows establish a recurring theme of dead children. The soldiers opposing Macbeth are beardless and nervous with anticipation, and a young soldier within Macbeth’s ranks is killed in a gruesome, slow-motion shot. The battlefield, soaked in the blood of children, is a fitting starting point for Macbeth’s violent usurpation of the throne.

Those additional scenes are not the only instances in which Kurzel strays from the bard’s words. Many scenes are shortened down to the “big lines” and some are removed entirely, as are many of the minor characters. Other than the two Macbeths, played by Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard, most characters are given pretty short shrift altogether. Banquo is reduced to a handful of lines, delivered blankly by Paddy Considine, and Jack Reynor’s Malcolm has his one major scene cut almost entirely. Overall, Kurzel appears more interested in the scenery than the characters who populate it with epic shots of snow-capped mountains, waterfalls, and the ever-present mist overshadowing the poor players beneath.

This is a shame, given the committed performances that Cotillard and Fassbender bring to their transformative roles. Cotillard deftly handles the change from venomous schemer to guilt-ridden madwoman, though her nefarious bits are slightly the over-the-top, featuring literal hissing at one point. Fassbender offers an extremely subtle portrayal of his character’s decline, from his first unforgivable deed through the many worse ones that follow. He goes from a stoic ferocity in the opening scene to a possessed, energetic frenzy by the final act, in a performance that shines through the camera’s detached gaze.

While it has its flaws and missteps through doing a disservice to certain scenes and characters, Kurzel’s gory interpretation offers a vital new imagining of the text, clouding the events in an atmosphere that is both beautiful and foreboding; foul and fair.

Macbeth will be showing at the IFI from October 2nd.