Polanski has increased the film's barbaric realism and fills the screen with blood, mud and brooding atmosphere.
Comment
07/02/08
Macbeth (1971)
86 %
Reviews Counted: 22 Fresh: 19 Rotten:3 Average Rating: 8/10
Consensus:
Roman Polanski's Macbeth is unsettling and uneven, but also undeniably compelling.
Runtime: 2 hrs 21 mins
Synopsis: William Shakespeare's immortal play about a Scottish warrior (Jon Finch) whose wife's lust for power transforms him into inhuman monster is given it's rawest, most brutal screen treatment in this version by Roman Polanski (ROSEMARY'S BABY, CHINATOWN). Filmed in suitably bleak locales... [More]
Genre: Dramas
Starring: Jon Finch, Nicholas Selby, Francesca Annis, Martin Shaw
Director: Roman Polanski
Reviews
Top Critic
Polanski's evident desire to elicit understated, naturalistic performances from his cast also underplays the poetry of the play...
06/24/06
Top Critic
Polanski elicited naturalistic understated performances from his actors which bolstered the play's realism while bringing the poetry down to earth. Some would argue he brought it too far down.
07/03/08
Top Critic
The wide-screen visuals swamp the dialogue, and the thematics have been turned inside out -- but that's what movie adaptations ought to do.
07/03/08
Released just two years after Polanski's then pregnant wife was brutally murdered by members of the Manson family, and morbidly preoccupied with violence and cruelty
03/24/06
An over-the-top bu highly effective adaption of the Shakespeare classic with Polanski's disctinctive touches.
03/25/05
With its apparent fixation on murder and cruelty, it is difficult to overlook a number of the unsettling autobiographical details in the film.
11/01/04
This is an original film by an original film artist, and not an 'interpretation.'
10/23/04
Top Critic
The film's bear-baiting, barnyard pageantry is less convincing than its clammy locations.
05/04/04
Forces Shakespeare into the modern terrain of sickly spiralling sensibilities, with blood, lust, and madness at the forefront.
03/16/04
Shakespeare's bloodiest play gets a chilling existentialist update from Roman Polanski
07/26/02
Shakespeare wrote “the play’s the thing,” but it makes an argument that the setting and direction can play just as important a role in dramatizing an adaptation.
06/10/02
Made shortly after the Sharon Tate murders, there's a disturbing resonance when Macbeth's gang of wild-eyed assassins butchers noble MacDuff's wife and children.
05/07/02
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• Macbeth at Rotten Tomatoes
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