There was much controversy when this film debuted, probably due to it being financed and produced by Hugh Hefner and Playboy, and probably because it was unblinkingly bloody upfront (although the blood is in the play, much of it is naturally offstage), and because of nudity in several key scenes (including the witches....all those old nude crones, while factually correct, no doubt upset many). Today, these seem like perfectly reasonable choices. The film is relentless and remorseless, as befits the story. I don't know what part of Polanski's personal tragedy had any part in his work here, but the direction is excellent. Finch and Anis are fine as the murderous Laird and his Lady, as is the rest of the cast.

If you want the play, see the play. If you want a stimulating and fully realized CINEMATIC treatment of Shakespeare's great themes of greed, ambition, murder, guilt and destiny, see this finely produced, directed, and acted work. Well worthwhile.


Not your grandfather's Shakespeare.   September 10, 2000
 40 out of 45 found this review helpful

This movie is violent and brutal, sparing the audience none of the blood that's implied in the play and adding some gratuitous nudity to boot. If you read the play in high school English class, you're in for a shock or seven with this version.

But I think that this is how Shakespeare would have made a movie. He certainly didn't direct his plays the way they're performed today, all mannered diction and high art. He put in plenty of dirty jokes for the groundlings, lots of sensationalist death and destruction. Shakespeare's plays were intended to sell as many tickets as possible; if Lady Macbeth wasn't played by a man back then, he probably would have wanted her sleepwalking nude as she does in this film.

Polanski has done an excellent job of rescuing "Macbeth" from the constrictions of "literature" and making it shake its moneymaker, as it were. If you can handle some gore and nudity, You're in for a heck of a ride.


Martin Brody likes it dark and violent   March 6, 2002
 24 out of 24 found this review helpful

Please ignore the poorly thought out review on this page. Anyone with either a passing interest in Shakespeare or an appreciation of film should seek this out now. Polanski, avoiding the trap so many other filmmakers fall into, makes a film based on Macbeth, not merely recording a performance of the play. He has crafted a breathlessly paced film, making very reasonable cuts in the text in order to bring the film in under 2 hours. I have seen much longer versions that had no grasp of the play at all.

Polanski also wisely chose not to use well-known stars for the major roles; instead utilizing some of the best (and youngest) British stage actors of the time. Jon Finch and Francesca Annis perfectly capture the most emotionally wrenched marriage ever, without the moustache twirling that finds its way into Shakespeare film adaptations too often. This film is dark, muddy, and violent; it is not intended for children. I have to assume that the people who complain about the violence in the film have never actually read the play. And I hope, for the sake of their own sanity, they steer clear of Titus Andronicus, Richard III, Julius Caesar, Othello, and if beheadings put a bee in your bonnet, beware Cymbeline!

... This is a raw, passionate telling of one of the great fictional works in the English language, by one of the great filmmakers of our time. But wait for the wide-screen DVD.


Brilliant adaptation of a Brilliant play!   March 27, 2000
 22 out of 23 found this review helpful

Wow! The liberties Polanski has taken with the Bard's classic have really floored me. This is truly a revelation. Our English teacher showed us this after we had completed our studies on the play, and I wasn't expecting a film half as good as this one. The movie has made waves for it's gore, violence, bleakness ( hey, it's a tragedy!), and Lady Macbeth's nude sleepwalking scene, but it's all done by a man who is totally in tune with what Shakespeare was trying to get accross. Although some scenes/lines have been dropped from this adaptation (such as Lady Macbeth telling Macbeth she would bash her baby's brains out if she had given her word to do so, or the rather humorous relay between Macduff and Malcom), and some things have been slightly altered (such as when Macbeth laments that his wife should bring forth men-children only, is now an Aside), but it all fits together so well that it is barely noticable (although I did slightly miss them). Every scene from the play has been brought to beautiful life. Moments like the exchange between Banquo and Macbeth, while Lady Macbeth is drugging Duncan's gaurds, are highly inventive and imaginative. As well, I have never been so entertained by the porter in any adaptation of Macbeth before! I could go on and on, yet I am limited to only 1000 words in this review, which is not enough by any stretch of the imagination to review this fine film. Do yourself a favour and see this movie, those of you who know Macbeth will fall in love with this vivid re-telling of Shakespeares tragedy, and make new fans out of the un-initiated. Oh, I almost forgot, the last scene is one of the most unexpected and suprizing endings I have ever seen, and further solidifies Polanski's brilliance here. Truly one for the ages. A classic.


"Blood will have blood..."   January 17, 1999
 19 out of 22 found this review helpful

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 bruvura 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" left off. And life is certainly 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." 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 so stepped in blood..." 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. 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's 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 little urchin has neither the skill nor the presence to adequately bring off one of Shakespeare's most formidable women. Annis's 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. 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 overstates his case.