The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

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

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

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

Not badly done at all. Peter Finch is a handsome young MacBeth, always responsible except when he's nuts. And Francesca Annis is a toothsome redhead. "Back in the day," this would have been shot under in Hollywood sunshine, full of scintillating seas and glorious gorse. But the director places the story where it belongs, in a Scotland of lowering skies, one that is dark, windswept, rainy, and almost barren.It's always interesting to see how movie directors handle the soliloquies. The conventions of the stage rarely work. Polanski gives the actors interior monologues. Lots of emotional close ups, not befitting a stage. It all works pretty well.MacBeth is a likable play, party because it's masterfully done -- the unlikely rhymes still raise my eyebrows -- but also because it's short and because the narrative is clear. The Bard could write some clunkers. I wonder if anyone can really sit through "Love's Labour's Lost" and truthfully claim he enjoyed it. No problem with MacBeth though, and nothing obscure about what's going on. If "Hamlet" was about a man who could not make up his mind, "MacBeth" is about a man whose reach exceeded his grasp -- and who went to hell for it. MacBeth has his head lopped off -- maybe twice, according to the play. WS needed a good copy editor.Oh, how we recognize that motive, the lust for power. It shows up in our technology. All of the Volkswagon Beetles of 1960 have been replaced by SUVs too massive to fit into the garage. A .38 special is infra dig. We want .44 magnums. Nor is the play politically correct in any way. It takes Lady MacBeth one second to decide that the King has to be slaughtered so her husband can rule. Okay, so the current king has just promoted MacBeth and given him a title. But "Thane of Cawdor," my foot. It's the KING who has the power.Of course the king's isn't the only death. The wily Lady MacBeth has framed the king's guards and MacBeth quickly slaughters them before they can be questioned. MacBeth is now King of Scotland but "uneasy lies the head that wears the crown," as someone once said. There is another threat. MacBeth's friend and rival -- Banquo, and his child must go too. The kid gets away but Banquo is assassinated in the woods. Banquo gets even later by showing up as a decomposing corpse at MacBeth's castle, Dunsinane, and spoiling a festive dinner.That famous scene is handled well enough although Polanksi brings nothing special to it, nor to the rest of the story for that matter. It's not distinctively Polanski's in any way, no "Chinatown" or "Rosemary's Baby." Visually, the most impressive scene is MacBeth's second visit to the Sinister Sisters in pursuit of some vision of the future. They slip him some psychedelic drug and things go round and round, to a point that surpasseth understanding -- mine anyway.Fortunately, Polanski works a little nudity into the play. When Lady Macbeth is wandering around in her sleep she's not wearing any clothes, a nice artistic touch. Too bad she talks to herself and spills the beans about her crimes in front of two gawking attendants. MacDuff's little boy is naked too and so are the Weird Sisters but they can be disregarded. One's testosterone level dwindles at the sight of those flabby, toothless, blind, cackling old women.MacBeth has still another impediment. There's MacDuff, next in line for the throne, now in exile. By this time, with so much blood having been shed, MacBeth's nobility and courtiers are beginning to wise up. They joke about MacBeth behind his back and wish him gone. But he's not gone yet. Now a tyrannical ruler, he must commit more and more murders to protect himself. MacDuff may be gone for the moment, but that doesn't stop MacBeth's lackeys from murdering MacDuff's wife and young son, while raping the maids and pillaging the house. That's a pretty rotten thing to do, when you get right down to it. Certainly MacDuff thinks so when he gets wind of it. He and his army set off in search of justice and revenge. MacDuff lays on. Boy, does he lay on.Polanski has a habit -- unfortunate in my opinion -- of tacking an unhappy ending on all of his movies, even a comedy like "The Fearless Vampire Killers." Well, MacBeth is already a tragedy so he doesn't have to tack an unhappy ending on it. Instead, he makes the entire story more hopeless. In the play, as I remember, Ross is only a minor figure, a messenger. Here, Ross (John Stride) is a buddy and supporter of MacBeth. He murders for MacBeth. But when towards the end, when he sniffs which way the wind is blowing, he deserts the king and hastens to inform MacDuff that the king has slaughtered MacDuff's family and servants. He's a sneaky character and he celebrates MacDuff's coronation with the same fake enthusiasm he did for MacBeth's. It is, as someone said, throwing a perfume on the violet. It's a double downer. Not only has MacBeth, the confused protagonist, given up the ghost, but now his successor, MacDuff has a mole in his midst. All that notwithstanding, it's a gripping tale made into a good movie.

The gold standard for Shakespeare's adaptations. Newer films with better cameras, lenses, film stock, new actors with the benefit of decades of acting to study, improvement in sound, microphones, bigger budgets for scores and for the whole film and not only has no one been able to make a better Macbeth than Polanski, but no one has made any better film adaptation of any of Shakespeare's work. This is the gold standard and it is yet to be beaten.The latest adaptation, Kurzel's 2016 Macbeth, is a beautiful audio and visual experience, but is a poorer film.This film is raw. Perhaps the old film stock, the lenses and the lower production standards (I saw it in 1080p, but it still looked raw) made this film look more real. It's so earthy and bloody, so dark, foggy and dirty. Macbeth is not a renaissance-era king, he is a king of a poor nation, his castle is not one of luxury but a military fort, his ascent to the throne does not take him into a life of royalty and comfort - he only becomes the highest ranking military leader with a heavy crown on his head.It really places Macbeth in his time, he is not just a pragmatic opportunist, but he is a product of his environment in a country where everyone is fighting for survival.Rather than present the world as a just place where just kings and just monarchies rule uninterruptedly until selfish Macbeth ruins this medieval utopia, the throne and the crown are shown as a hot potato that no one could hold on for too long. The world is a cruel place and Macbeth and his wife play this political game, but they are neither the first nor the last, they were not the worst but certainly not the best, for their victory was short-lived - they were the fiercest and most intelligent in a very thin slice of time and once that time was over, it was someone else's turn to play this game.That's what I loved about this film - not presenting the Macbeths as a political anomaly, but business as usual. This was a mere chapter in the bloody history of Scotland, not the story of one particular tyrant in an otherwise peaceful history.It is king of the hill and victories are all short-lived. Heroes are rewarded, their ambitions grow, rivalries arise and things are decided by the sword.This film is, however, less of a historical film and more of a psychological horror, the relationship between the king and queen collapsing under the weight of their guilt, mental disease and the two kings of suffering Macbeth endures - the guilt of how he got the crown and the separate pressures of ruling Scotland, which every king, legitimate or not must endure, a position which did not turn out to be the dream job he had envisioned, but a nightmare as he has become the biggest target.The Macbeths had the gall for the act of treason, but not the stomach for the long term consequences. It is the intertwined story of the individual, the couple and the nation. It is not one more than the other. They are all sides of the same Mobius strip.Polanski takes Shakespeare's message and without changing it much, he amplifies it.

The Tragedy of Macbeth--shown in the U.S. as Macbeth (1971)--was scripted and directed by Roman Polanski. Shakespeare's great play can be readily adapted to the screen, but it takes a master director like Roman Polanski to bring something more to what Shakespeare has written.Polanski has done some obvious things--opened up the play with vast, gloomy vistas along the coastline and the heath, and expanded the fight scenes. However, he's done some unpredictable, creative things as well. For example, the scenes with the "weird sisters" and their coven are brilliant. The scene of the murders at Macduff's castle are horrifying, and probably inspired by the brutal murder of Polanski's wife Sharon Tate by the Manson gang.Many directors can depict medieval scenes with the requisite mud, filth, and primitive objects. But, in my opinion, Polanski is a genius at this. The settings don't look carefully created with just the right amount of mud, animals, and slop. They look as if they exist in reality, not just for the purposes of the camera. This realism really worked for me, and enhanced the plot and the acting.The acting is excellent--especially by Jon Finch as Macbeth and Francesca Annis as Lady Macbeth. (Annis performed the sleepwalking scene in the nude, which was considered noteworthy in 1971, but appears pretty tame in 2014.)Special note: Paul Shelley plays Donalbain, King Duncan's younger son. Donalbain disappears from Shakespeare's play after Duncan's murder. Polanski depicts Donalbain as having a pronounced limp. Polanski did this for a reason, which will become clear when you see the movie.We saw the film on Criterion DVD, where it worked well. However, if you can see it in a theater, it will be even more rewarding.

Vehement and inch-perfect approach of Roman Polanski towards Shakespeare's greatest play "Macbeth". Polanski's absolute narrative technique and profound direction set the heinous deed of Macbeth and his tragic fate with elegance. He brilliantly represents all Shakespearean symbols on the screen--- especially the floating "dagger", apparitions in the witches' den. Jon Finch powerfully portrays the downfall of Macbeth while Annis appears vivid struggling with her greed and conscience. Vibrantly, one of the mightiest adaptations from Shakespeare's :p8/10__:D