Roman Polanski's notoriously violent film of Shakespeare's notorious "Scottish play" doesn't quite satisfy as it should. His bleak modernist interpretation is ultimately just too limiting, still it's certainly a bravura piece of moviemaking and can be best appreciated as such. After all, this is not really Shakespeare per se but a Polanski film: the prevailing themes of witchcraft, rampant paranoia, and finally triumphant evil pick up right where ROSEMARY'S BABY (1968) left off. And life is certainly solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short in this movie -- Shakespeare's poetry takes a backseat to a surfeit of excruciatingly detailed mutilations with plenty of blades slashing through jugular veins, culminating in a truly epic decapitation. This MACBETH is a relentless homicidal debauch: Polanski displays the same technical virtuosity and gruesome inventiveness in staging the numerous murders here as he did in REPULSION (1965). All of Shakespeare's famous metaphors (e.g., `is this a dagger I see before me?') are garishly literalized and deliberately engineered as part of an escalating series of spectacular, cathartic, bloodier-than-hell set-pieces.
Visually, the film is rich and vivid: the forbidding images of rain-swept moors and twilit horizons possess a spellbinding primeval quality. And there are a few brilliant, inspired moments such as when our murderous Scot, whilst lying in his bed-chamber, broods "I am stepped in blood so far..." and the whole room is bathed in an eerie crimson light. But the scene that truly stands out is when he visits the witches in their lair and is shown his fate: it's a gorgeous, thrilling, and strikingly imaginative surrealist reverie, reminiscent of Buñuel's 'magical realism.' The actors, nearly all British stage pros, are solid and reliable. As Macbeth, morose, dark-eyed Jon Finch is really quite good -- and he certainly does have the diction for the role. But Francesca Annis' sickly nymphet Lady Macbeth is a glaring (and oh-so-characteristic) lapse in judgement on the director's part. Weak-voiced, pasty-faced, and generally irritating, this petulant, saucer-eyed little urchin has neither the skill nor the presence to adequately bring off one of Shakespeare's most formidable women. Annis' feeble performance renders the basic psychological premise of the play -- Lady Macbeth's manipulation of her husband to fulfill her delusions of grandeur -- unconvincing to say the least. Finch just looks uncomfortably stricken while Annis acts coy and childish.
All in all, Polanski's MACBETH is a decidedly thorny piece of work: since it was his first film following the murder of his pregnant wife Sharon Tate and friends by members of the Charles Manson cult, he seems to have had too much to prove here. He makes Banquo (Martin Shaw) Macbeth's rival and presents Ross (John Stride) as the play's eternal villain -- the faceless, blandly smiling Machiavellian 'company man' who shifts his allegiance as it suits him, crawling in and out of political woodwork at will. And by dispensing with the Bard's customary knot-tying closing speech and ending instead with an abrupt silent scene suggesting basically that the cycle of treachery and murder will spiral forever through the ages, Polanski seems to overstate his case.
Visually, the film is rich and vivid: the forbidding images of rain-swept moors and twilit horizons possess a spellbinding primeval quality. And there are a few brilliant, inspired moments such as when our murderous Scot, whilst lying in his bed-chamber, broods "I am stepped in blood so far..." and the whole room is bathed in an eerie crimson light. But the scene that truly stands out is when he visits the witches in their lair and is shown his fate: it's a gorgeous, thrilling, and strikingly imaginative surrealist reverie, reminiscent of Buñuel's 'magical realism.' The actors, nearly all British stage pros, are solid and reliable. As Macbeth, morose, dark-eyed Jon Finch is really quite good -- and he certainly does have the diction for the role. But Francesca Annis' sickly nymphet Lady Macbeth is a glaring (and oh-so-characteristic) lapse in judgement on the director's part. Weak-voiced, pasty-faced, and generally irritating, this petulant, saucer-eyed little urchin has neither the skill nor the presence to adequately bring off one of Shakespeare's most formidable women. Annis' feeble performance renders the basic psychological premise of the play -- Lady Macbeth's manipulation of her husband to fulfill her delusions of grandeur -- unconvincing to say the least. Finch just looks uncomfortably stricken while Annis acts coy and childish.
All in all, Polanski's MACBETH is a decidedly thorny piece of work: since it was his first film following the murder of his pregnant wife Sharon Tate and friends by members of the Charles Manson cult, he seems to have had too much to prove here. He makes Banquo (Martin Shaw) Macbeth's rival and presents Ross (John Stride) as the play's eternal villain -- the faceless, blandly smiling Machiavellian 'company man' who shifts his allegiance as it suits him, crawling in and out of political woodwork at will. And by dispensing with the Bard's customary knot-tying closing speech and ending instead with an abrupt silent scene suggesting basically that the cycle of treachery and murder will spiral forever through the ages, Polanski seems to overstate his case.
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