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Great visuals, story delivers no surprises

Excellent, Without a doubt!!

Did you people see the same film I saw?

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Let's start with the Manson murderers, because it seems that everyone feels the need to mention them when talking about this film. Pauline Kael herself likened the infamous slaying of Macduff's wife and children to the real life tragedy, referring to the bodies as no longer human but "pieces", "scattered" round like a "chicken yard". Well, Polanski may or may not have deliberately mirrored the two, but in any case the scene would have remained as an integral part of the violent takeover of Macbeth. Others might draw comparisons to the moral degeneracy of the characters or the bloody gore and graphic violence, never mind the fact that 11th century Scotland contained far more than any screen might allow, and a fair share of nudity to boot. If there are personal foundations in the film they remain deeply buried within Polanski himself, and a few splatters of fake blood could never truly account for that. It is nevertheless a gloomy and miserable experience for most. Not even the splendour or status of a king can fully combat the elements (partly due to Macbeth's insistence to remain at his own seat), and much of the establishing wide shots seek to portray this; an ugly grey castle sitting atop a twisted hill, with miles and miles of icy grassland and nothing pushing against the dismal clouds. The opening battle takes place is what is basically a swamp, and no shot is complete without a heavy dose of mist, smoke or wind, the sun rarely managing to pierce through. The insides of the great castle are much the same - cold walls and colder inhabitants getting by, and even the brief elation of the king's visit is drowned out by a rainstorm. Their whole existence is akin to the flickering candle in the wind and rain; try as they might to resist with music, dancing and a warm dose of Scottish merry, the light never quite reaches the edges of the frame. If Polanski has gone for atmosphere then he has also gone for characters that do not quite fit them. The casting of young Finch and Annis seems to favour spirit and impulsivity over wisdom. Polanski wants them to burst from the seams of the dreary Scottish wasteland, and be utterly consumed by lust of each other and more importantly, power. But the performances don't follow suit. Instead of dramatic performance he opts for internal monologue, so their physical youth and beauty is not nearly the factor it should be. Worse, when they do speak Polanski insists on constantly moving the camera to show off his shadows and set design, as well as having the actors turn their back on us. When Finch wrests with the love of Duncan from the peasants, imagining their tears if he was slain so immeasurable that not even the rain could compare (as the storm drips on, a nice touch), he doesn't seem to know whether he should face the camera or look away from it, and spends the whole soliloquy awkwardly nodding back and forth. And there is the infamous naked sleepwalking of Lady Macbeth, which demonstrates the error in casting Francesca Annis. She's too frozen and stilted in the face and lips, so Polanski has to show off her body to compensate, but does it clumsily, and doesn't enable her to use her physical beauty to her advantage. She's much too pretty to be whispered grotesquely about wanting her womb to be ripped and unsexed, and the encounters between husband and wife are not filled with urgency and desire. Instead of leaping and clawing at each other Finch carries her up the stairs like a new bride over the threshold, which only demeans her character further. The action has been described as ugly and awkward, to a degree unrehearsed, which lends to its authenticity. Certainly the final duel is staged along these lines, the sword swings heavy and erratic, the stances stumbling from the blows, the shots a little on the dirty side (they utilise the kick quite well). But veering too much towards that side of authenticity and 'grit' can result in something completely out of the ordinary: unintentional comedy. Macbeth's stolen crown falls off during the fight, and midway he staggers from a blow, and sits for a breather to clutch at it and desperately place it back on top of his head, as if trying to reassert the last remaining vestiges of his power. We can understand the meaning behind this action, but the way the fight pauses and focuses onto it immediately breaks any tension that Polanski had accumulated. And for all the ugliness of this duel, we have the fight before it, where the apparently invincible Macbeth (in his mind) prances and sidesteps his way through a soldier's attack before allowing the defeated to fall back into his own arms, stab him in the neck, and whisper dramatically into the ear: "Thou werest born of woman." Is this medieval warfare, or ballet recital?Still, one change that Polanski has conjured up is inspiring. The end recalls the beginning, where the oft forgotten second son Donalbain once again rides through fog and mist to meet with the three witches who will bestow upon him an equally deadly premonition. By luring another man of similar stature into their web, Polanski denounces any glory or significance that the late Macbeth might have acquired in his brief tyranny. It suggests that this lust can creep around and into other men's minds, and that is has ruled and dictated our actions for many years past. That man became Donald III of Scotland, who laid siege to Edinburgh and seized the throne after his brother Malcolm's death.

Macbeth is the film which is more Polanski than Shakespeare from the late 70s. The story might be faithful to the play but there are few changes and few little disturbing points. It is starred by John Finch as Macbeth and Francesca Anis as Lady Macbeth. As Polanski directed it, the darker part of the play was shown much of it. For the family audiences or the student audiences the censored version should be shown. The plot is about a thane of Cawdor, Scotland whose encounter with the witches and support of his mistress let his ambition to misguidance. Therefore it leads through such tragedy that creates a disturbingly painful tone. The acting is the important part of the Shakespeare play. John Finch and Anis played justice to their roles. The disturbing point for us Asians is the nudity of the witches; the little child who was showering nude plus the epic battle scenes in which Macbeth's head was cut. The soliloquy was replaced as inner monologues to make it more realistic. The scenes foreshadow the cut from the text. There are some characters which were developed rather than the play. The music were suitable at the 70s but a weak point if you go to the post-modern period. The music shows the dramatic picture and the film made more historical. It shows from the protagonist's view as most Polanski's films do. The set design was rough and dry as the atmosphere of the play. The rain also symbolizes dark prediction of the film. Lady Macbeth's acting was brilliant. The direction was superb and the camera angle grabs the attention of the viewers. Overall, the story is more of the play but it's not for the family audiences. But it was the best Macbeth adaptation and there was no option to find the alternatives. It's a four hour film like Hamlet. It's also a must watch for adult Shakespearean viewers.

Witches deliver a prophesy to Scottish warlord Macbeth that he will be King. Macbeth's wife pushes him towards the notion that the only way to ensure this is by killing the current King himself. And so he embarks on a fateful course of events.Roman Polanski's 1971 adaptation of Macbeth, one of Shakespeare's darkest plays, makes full use of cinema to place the words of the play into a grim, grey, grimy reality. As you watch Macbeth work his way further along a road to tragedy, the visuals which accompany Shakespeare's words place those words into a brutally real world.The performances are great, but this is an excellent adaptation, and makes you think that this is perhaps the sort of presentation which Shakespeare might have been involved in making had he still been alive.

I wrote this review as a writing assignment for my English class, and questions were asked before so if it seems like I'm jumping from topic to topic I'm sorry. The Questions basically asked were what did you think, what scenes where effective and not effective and why, also was the violence overdone, and compared to todays violence and how did Polanski add his own interpretation to the play. I really liked by review so I thought I'd post it.I really enjoyed Roman Polanski's version of Macbeth. I think it was an excellent depiction of the play and very historically accurate. I believe the most effective scene was the one at the very beginning. There were many great scenes in this movie but this scene starts the story, in what I believe, the best possible way to show you how the rest of the movie will be themed like. You watch as a medieval warrior saunters on screen, tired from battle, onto a muddy and dank used battle field covered in dead bodies. Then he marches over to one of the bodies, maybe one that isn't fully dead, and bludgeons it with a mace. I think this show's how violent and unmerciful the time was and how the movie will be.There are no scenes in the movie that weren't effective. All of them conveyed the message of the play and the reality of the time when it was set. I do think some continuity was spared to keep it accurate to the play and the time, but that might have just been the 1971 film making. Which is surprisingly good considering the movie was made by Playboy Productions over 40 years ago.I think the violence in the movie was not overdone. I think peoples ideas of what the play is like have been jaded because any other way the play has been done, read aloud or made by a low-budget high school drama club, wasn't the way it was meant to be seen. This is the closest representations of what Shakespeare wanted yet, in my opinion. Compared to the violence of today's film I think there is no comparison. Today's violence in film is all special effects and exploitation. It's all about the shock value. This movie's violence is realistic and shows how much violence is in the play and how much is implied but not seen. It's a violent play, so anything less than I violent movie would be unacceptable.I think Roman Polanski put his interpretation on the play first by making it a film. Some of the shots are comparable to Alfred Hitchcock. It is truly cinematic. The expressions on the actors faces. The composition of the Scottish countryside. The dark and musty castle. The choreography on the fights alone was simply beautiful. Even the way the Shakespearean language is spoken so naturally and conversational. This kind of excellence could not be accomplished on the stage or any other medium. Roman Polanski did an amazing job and this is one of the best reproductions of Shakespeare I have ever seen.