Film Festival film #10: Macbeth

[bcholmes]

This was a really good production of Macbeth. Set in the modern day, Macbeth is a drug dealer, working for his "King", Duncan. The film faithfully uses Shakespeare's dialog, although the order of some speeches has been shifted a bit. After moments, the fact that they're speaking in iambic pentameter no longer registers with me. The film makes it work.

There are some brilliant interpretations: Macbeth's first dialog with the Weird Sisters is especially nice. He's in a dance bar (after having killed a group of drug runners who run the place), and perhaps a bit high, and he's turned on the music and the smoke machine and he sees the Weird Sisters, and he's not sure if it's an hallucination or not.

And when MacDuff and the other lords raid Macbeth's home, they use a huge lumber truck to knock down the security gate. The truck, of course, has a "Birnam Timber" logo on it.

It's possibly the best filmed version I've seen. Better than the Polanski version. Possibly even better than Welles'.

Comments

[50-ft-queenie.livejournal.com]

Sold. I must see this.