Linbeymusol Wonderful character development!

Thehibikiew Not even bad in a good way

Hadrina The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Calum Hutton It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

Fahmid Hassan Prohor 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.

Steffi_P Probably the strangest bit of trivia about this version of MacBeth is that it was produced by the Playboy corporation, of all things. Or perhaps it's not really that surprising given director Roman Polanski's lecherous ways that he was in alliance with Hefner et al. Certainly, this isn't soft-porn Shakespeare (unless you count some elderly nakedness and the leaving in of one of the bard's penis jokes). No, this is in fact more in keeping with the era's penchant for realism, especially in the field of violence.The bleakness of a Scottish picture really suits Polanski, but it is his trademark feeling of enclosure that most of all gives this MacBeth its character. With the simplest of elements he can make the image feel maddeningly hemmed-in. There is a lot of heavy foreground business, as well as visible ceilings and low angles, but the real trick is the way Polanski gives us just a tiny glimpse of an exit. There is, for instance, a shot just before MacBeth gets made thane where he awakens in his tent. As he raises his head a gap in the seams of the tent comes into view, and the result is more claustrophobic than if it had been simply bare canvas behind him. This confined atmosphere is of best effect in the Duncan murder scene, which has echoes of the demon rape in Rosemary's Baby, Polanski's previous picture. Note that there is no dialogue in this scene; it is not an official part of the play and most versions do not include it. So Polanski is taking a gamble in showing the act, but he pulls it off fairly well. Also very good is the dreamlike series of visions in the witches' den, which go for a warm, prickly fear rather than spooky chills.In coaching his actors Polanski seems to want to shear the production of all theatricality, treating Shakespeare's play as if it were a new screenplay rather than a thing of grand traditions. Hence we get the witches' rather businesslike manner of stating that they are off to meet with MacBeth. As such, while not badly acted, the performances don't really stand out. The naturalism is nice to see, but it could do with a little more heart and soul. Another problem is that some of the more quirky bit players, for example Richard Pearson as the doctor, seem strangely out-of-place amid the more sober lead actors. Polanski makes up for the lack of grandiose hamming with plenty of blood-spattered medievalism, with stabbed-up corpses, bear-baiting matches and rolling heads. This is all fair enough, but perhaps the production could have done with a bit more of the old theatrics, to bring out the life in Shakespeare's lines.And it also seems somewhat that Polanski has got caught up in the gore and authenticity and neglected some of the more abstract elements of the original work. For example, I would have liked to see a better realisation of the idea that the land itself, via the metaphor of the transplanted forest, is rejecting its false king. Not that one necessarily has to be faithful to every thought of the bard – I am all for reinterpretation – it's just that without some kind of commentary, some kind of ideal, it seems MacBeth becomes little more than a dreary catalogue of unpleasant happenings.

submarine-green7 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.

tensaip Annis's interpretation of Lady MacBeth should be understood as Polanski's interpretation of his late wife, Sharon Tate. In his interpretation of the MacBeths, Polanski sees MacB as a man who has married slightly above his station to the most beautiful woman in Scotland. Note that other characters, especially King Duncan are wholly besotted with her. In medieval times it was generally accepted that beauty was NOT SKIN DEEP and that any ugliness on the inside would manifest on the outside.The drawback is that MacBeth, while a terror in battle, has few social graces and the VIPs who come to visit really only come by to ogle his perfect wife. The wife, however, is manipulatively passive-aggressive and socially ambitious. Having come down in station to marry him, she is eager to find some way to re-ascend. MacBeth is frightful of losing her since she is the one thing he has that his superiors envy. Once her husband is finally the King, Lady MacBeth realizes she is no longer his top asset, and, though he undoubtedly loves her, she can no longer manipulate his sense of social inferiority.