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Francesca Annis and Jon Finch as the murderous Macbeth's in Polanski's dark Shakespearean adaptation |
Director: Roman Polanski
Cast: Jon Finch (Macbeth), Francesca Annis (Lady Macbeth),
Martin Shaw (Banquo), Terence Bayler (Macduff), John Stride (Ross), Nicholas
Selby (King Duncan), Stephen Chase (Malcolm), Paul Shelley (Donalbain), Richard
Pearson (Doctor), Diane Fletcher (Lady Macduff)
Roman Polanski is always going to be a controversial figure.
If he wasn’t also a gifted film maker, his reputation would be even lower than
it is. His life has been a parade of misfortunes and misdemeanours. Macbeth was filmed a few years after his
wife, Sharon Tate, was brutally murdered by Charles Manson. Hard not to read
something into the director’s decision to film Shakespeare’s most infamous
murderer. Certainly it was hard for reviewers at the time to disconnect the
two. Throw in the fact that the film was made by Playboy Productions’ short
lived film-making arm (with Hugh Hefner as Executive Producer) and you’ve got a
film ripe for a poor reputation.
However, Macbeth
is actually a dynamic, well-filmed, surprisingly textually savvy production of
this shortest and most intense of Shakespeare’s tragedies. While there is no
doubt that this very much Polanski’s personal vision of Macbeth, it’s a fascinatingly dark, grim and horror-inflected production
that really gets to grips with the darkness at the play’s heart – and also with
the slightly empty, little-boy-lost quality in Macbeth himself (until then a
character seen on screen largely as the brooding thane, laid low by his evil
wife).
Polanski’s Macbeth
takes place in a world where violence is second nature, life is cheap and grim
slaughter is around every corner. One of the first acts we see is a soldier
checking bodies on the battlefield. Finding a wounded soldier, he breaks his
spine with two sickening blows from a flail. That’s just a precursor for the violent
mood that will follow. Mangled bodies and bleeding corpses constantly appear,
from Duncan’s guards to the twisted corpses of the Macduff children. Even when
relaxing at the court, the Macbeths set up a bear baiting (kept off-screen) –
the bear’s corpse (along with a few dogs) is later dragged through the palace
corridors, leaving a trail of blood.
Polanski’s Scotland is a savage, medieval, uncivilised
place. Macbeth’s castle is a more like an elaborate farm, with wooden huts and
mud-stained floors, than a mighty fortress. Every character looks swarthy, run-down
and dirty. Colour has been drained out of the film in favour of muted greys and
browns. There is precious little hope here, just a terrible onslaught of
violence and murder that never seems to stop.
The brutality is constant, and Macbeth is up to his arms in
it. Even the murder of Duncan doesn’t pass off without a hitch – the King
awakens and has to be dispatched with panicked desperation. Banquo is finished off
with a sickening axe thud in the back, his body dropping lifelessly into a stream.
Even Macbeth’s faithful factotum Seyton is brutally lynched while trying to
prevent his soldiers from deserting Dunsinane. The assault on the Macduff
family is hideous in its fierceness: the house is burnt down, the servants (and
its implied Lady Macduff) raped, while the children are brutally murdered
(thankfully off-screen in most cases). It’s a harrowing slaughter that brings
to mind World War II atrocities – and of course Polanski’s own recent tragedy.

Similarly, Francesca Annis presents a fresher view of Lady
Macbeth than a cartoon villain. While clearly still alluring (there was much
controversial, Playboy-related, buzz to her famous naked sleepwalking scene)
she’s equally as adrift as Macbeth is, totally unprepared for the psychological
impact of murder. Excited and perhaps even a bit turned on by power, she falls
apart as the impact of her actions grabs hold – it seems to be happening from
the very start, her swooning when seeing the corpses of Duncan’s guards seems
genuine rather than forced. Polanski even places her suicide on screen – her
despairing leap accompanied by screams of terror from her waiting women.
In this grim world, there is a paganish, primitive feeling.
Macbeth is crowned in a strange ceremony that involves him standing bare foot
on the stone of scone. The Thane of Cawdor is executed by being hung by a metal
chain (he defiantly jumps from the battlements rather than being pushed) while
the court stares on. The witches are a crazed harem of naked women of all ages,
engaged in bizarre, sadistic ceremonies in a secret subterranean den. The
opening shot of the film uses a bright, bleached yellow sun that seems to
stretch over a desolate coast-line, where the witches are burying a human hand
clutching a dagger. Macbeth's visions are a series of surreal and disturbing images, while Banquo's ghost is an increasingly bloody and terrifying image as the scene progresses. There is a sense of strange powers hanging over everything.
And maybe that power is fate. This is also a fatalistic
film, which runs with the theory that Shakespeare’s tragedies are almost
circular in nature (very much inspired by Polish writer Jan Kott in his
excellent book Shakespeare: Our
Contemporary) with fate as a machine that traps people into an endless
cycle of repetition. This feeling runs throughout Macbeth’s increasingly
fatalistic disengagement with the world – the (excellent) sword fights at the
end even see him fight with a certainty in advance of the results. The cyclical
nature of this world is hammered home at the end, as Donalbain sneaks away from
the celebrations of Malcolm’s crowning to consult with the witches in their
hovel – hold onto your horses, the cycle is all set to begin again.
The film is also creative in its use of Shakespeare, in
particular in its expansion of the character of Ross. Polanski and his co-screenwriter,
famed theatre critic Ken Tynan, again followed Kott’s theories by repositioning
Ross as the ultimate political opportunist. Helped by John Stride’s expressive
performance, Ross is a constant figure of vileness, allying himself eagerly
with whoever is on the rise. Ross assists in the murder of Banquo, murders the
murderers and aids the destruction of the Macduff family. Overlooked for a
chain of office in favour of Seyton, he swiftly reverses his stance and flies
to Malcolm (much to Macbeth’s later fury) and then loudly leads the cheers for
Malcolm’s crowning. It’s a neat side story, done with camera asides and no
dialogue changes, but it adds a lot of interest to the film.
Macbeth ends with
a gruelling beheading of Macbeth – and stylish angles gives the impression that
we are experiencing Macbeth’s final moments of consciousness as his head is
passed around Malcolm’s soldiers. It’s a neat way to end a violent and dark
production of the play, shot through with Polanski’s personal awareness of the
darkness of the human soul. The film sometimes loses its pace a little bit, and
most of the performances leave very little impression - there is a reason why virtually no one in this film had a really established film career. Even the language of
Shakespeare isn’t central here: it’s the experience of a brutal, dark and grim
world that matters. It’s the images and visuals that stand out. It’s very much
Polanski’s Macbeth.