Sometimes Shakespeare films can be a bit cosy, if you know what I mean.

Because you know the text, you learned it at school.

But yourMacbethis really intense visually as well as in terms of performance.

Was that important for you to establish?

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I think so.

So I guess intimacy became a big thing how to engage an audience.

Thats a big part of depicting the characters as well.

Snowtownwas about what motivates people to kill.

Did you think of this as a crime drama, almost it just happens to be a period piece?

More so like a western, I think.

Its interesting my big interest in doing it was Michael [Fassbender].

I greatly admired him, and he was someone I really wanted to work with.

And then, as I started rediscovering the play, I did see a lot of similarities withSnowtown.

The fascination with violence and brutality.

Its about someone whos liberated by it, and it shifts his moral code.

A sense of him being liberated in some way.

I read something that a psychologist wrote, which said that most violence comes from humiliation or powerlessness.

I think one of the things that makesMacbethtimeless is that it holds water psychologically.

I think it is.

I was saying in another interview, were all paper thin.

Its almost like were standing on the precipice of madness.

I think theres a very small step from opening up a door and sinking into that.

Because were surrounded constantly by insecurities, loss, grief, who we are.

I think those questions and those fears about what we could become we wrestle with those everyday.

Theres something really interesting aboutMacbethand the way he opens that door and walks down the staircase.

It allows you to imagine it.

I thought that about my first film,Snowtown.

It didnt take long.

I found that so frightening.

InMacbeth, it plays with and teases a perspective on violence and brutality that feels touchable.

He just happens to do it.

Shakespeares exploring it in the most extraordinary, sophisticated way in terms of the words he chooses.

I was watchingBreaking Badduring editing!

Id never watched it before.

It was really interesting, because I was trying to editMacbethand it was really challenging.

So to escape from it all, I was watchingBreaking Bad.

I think thats what inherently interesting about this piece.

We love watching people dismantle themselves.

We love watching the car crash.

Youre just charged by that car crash waiting to happen.

I think thats whats so contemporary about it.

There are lots of parallels between Macbeth and contemporary TV and films.

I understand the shoot was difficult as well.

We were in the middle of winter in Scotland.

The weathers always drizzly, and it was minus whatever.

To recite the verse in that sort of landscape was really, really tough.

But that was a big part of it to make the characters feel exposed to those conditions and environments.

It comes through, doesnt it?

I think that helps ground it.

You believe that the words are coming out of this place, this environment.

It gives it a context that feels visceral and real.

The great thing about cinema is that you’re able to take an approach that feels very believable.

What was your approach to designing the look of the film?

I loved the opening, where a bar of crimson scrolls up onto the screen.

Id love to know what your thinking behind that was.

Well, I was interested in the legend of Macbeth.

The idea that the story had been buried under the land.

Its like were coming out from underground.

You see at the beginning, the warrior Macbeth.

The design, the look of it, was inspired by 11th century times.

I wanted it to feel as though things were simple, brutal.

There was something desperate about the place.

Or like it was designed from the inside out rather than this heavy world.

We looked at a lot of pioneer photographs.

I was inspired by a lot of westerns.

I was reading a lot of Cormac McCarthy at the time, too.

I was really inspired by those pioneering towns.

Inverness became like one of those, like a town camped on the edge.

I liked the idea of these characters living on the land, and times almost being eaten by it.

The castle feels like a prison, doesnt it?

Yeah, it does.

I thought the witches were interesting.

The witches and the burning woods were the two challenges of the film.

I wanted to ground them, so that they feel as though they could possibly be real travellers.

That they had a kind of dignity, they felt more human.

Just underplaying them, really.

Again, just really simple.

A simple use of them, as opposed to them being these supernatural manifestations, like witches and ghosts.

Justin Kurzel, thank you very much.

Macbethis out in UK cinemas on the 2nd October.