© 2002 John Murphy

It is difficult to watch Roman Polanski’s haunting Macbeth and not be uncomfortably reminded of the gruesome circumstances that inspired it. In the late sixties, Polanski was shit-hot off the success of Rosemary’s Baby. He had a beautiful wife, an expectant child, and a posh house in Beverly Hills. Then the gravy train derailed with the brutal, senseless murder of his pregnant wife and three friends at the hands of would-be messianic wacko, Charles Manson, and his gang of devotees. What this did to Polanski, already a childhood survivor of the Holocaust, is anybody’s guess. One can be sure, however, that his choice of source material for his next film was not a coincidence.

Polanski’s next project, financed by Playboy publisher Hugh Hefner, was an adaptation of Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Polanski does not impose his own pessimistic vision of the world on the play, as some have supposed. Rather, the “Scottish Play” itself is already a moody masterpiece of violence and viscera, dark incantations and spectral visitations. Dainty productions showcasing high diction and affected poses miss the point entirely. This is a bleak, almost overtly nihilistic piece-of-work. No one listening to Macbeth’s famous “Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow” speech could doubt that. The play is one of Shakespeare’s shortest, and shoots like an arrow at its target: a dark vision of a world “Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

So what does Polanski bring to the table? Plenty of sound and fury, as it turns out. This version is a far cry from Orson Welles’ stagy, highly stylized noir Macbeth. Polanski favors a brutally realistic, down-and-dirty approach to the text. The Northern Wales location provides a constant torrent of rain and an empty gray landscape that seems almost lunar. The witches are dirty, ugly hags from a Bosch painting. Pigs scurry through the muddy ground of Inverness. Characters look hygiene-challenged. I like the moment, for example, when King Duncan and Macbeth embrace early in the film and a cloud of dust flies off the well-traveled Macbeth’s cloak. And when the time comes for Duncan’s summons “To Heaven or to Hell,” the scene (offstage in the play) is played as comically horrific. Duncan writhes and twists, trying to fend off Macbeth, who repeatedly jabs at him with his dagger. I didn’t know whether to laugh or wince. Same with Macbeth and Macduff’s penultimate battle: Their fight sequence is clumsy and stupid-looking. Kind of like a real fight.
In other words, Polanski doesn’t grovel before a sacrosanct text. He wrestles with the words, and brings his own not insignificant talent to bear on the source. Polanski’s vision has a catalyst in the performances. Macbeth, as played by Jon Finch, possesses a hypnotically brooding gaze and an intense delivery. Despite his young age (a different spin on the part―usually Macbeth is middle-aged) he seems perpetually tormented, both before and after gaining the crown. Though physically slight for the warrior-poet he is purportedly portraying, I found his performance gripping and his command of the text impressive. His weary reading of the “Tomorrow” speech, done mostly in voice-over, is affecting.
A weak point of the movie is Francesca Annis as Lady Macbeth. Polanksi opts for a younger, less manipulative variation on the theme of the infamous Lady M. Annis resembles the blonde-waif heroines of Polanski’s previous films (think Mia Farrow and Catherine Deneuve), but it just doesn’t work. Lady Macbeth is a strong and calculating prototype femme fatale, not a wispy, breathy-voiced non-entity. When Macbeth tells his wife “We shall think no further on this business” (i.e. let’s not kill Duncan) Lady Macbeth bursts into tears and speaks her lines with a halting, whimpering delivery. The effect is laughable, not convincing. Annis is by no means a bad actor, but I can’t see how this interpretation holds any dramatic water. Finch has too much gravitas in his performance to seem appropriately whipped by a fussy Lady Macbeth. And her by now infamous nude sleepwalking scene (a source of controversy at the time of the film’s release) seems both tame and gratuitous. I don’t see the point of it, unless it was to appease the movie’s producer, Hefner. Annis rallies for one stunning scene, however, her last in the film and a departure from the text. After Lady Macbeth has already started to lose her grip on reality, Polanski creates a scene where she reads the letter Macbeth wrote to her earlier in the play (informing her of the witches’ prophecy). She is visibly cracking under the guilt of her actions: her voice trembles and her hands shake as she reads Macbeth’s words to her, his “Dearest partner in greatness.” It is a chilling scene, and an effective alteration of the original.
Polanski falters when he veers away from his naturalistic approach and attempts stylistic flourishes. The “Is this a dagger I see before me” sequence is a particular howler. The dagger of Macbeth’s mind is a sparkling, chintzy-looking bit of special effects that elicits groans from the viewer. Equally groan-inducing is the appearance of Banquo’s ghost at Macbeth’s dinner table. Banquo’s ghost spews buckets of blood from its wounds as it pursues a retreating, horrified Macbeth. The effect is ridiculous, not terrifying.
“Terrifying,” however, is the best word to describe the slaughter of Lady Macduff, her children, and servants at the hands of Macbeth’s lackeys. This is the scene that must have hit closest to home for Polanski, since it is virtually a re-enactment of his own wife’s murder by the Manson “family.” Polanski pulls no punches. Having already witnessed the murder of her son, Lady Macduff runs through her castle in an attempt to escape. She sees the rape of one of her servants and stumbles into a room with the blood-smeared corpses of the castle’s other occupants piled together. The effect is truly horrifying and eerily authentic.
Polanski ends the film with a grim epilogue representative of his pessimistic outlook. Macbeth has been defeated by the forces of good. Macduff has exacted his revenge and the noble Malcolm has been restored to his rightful place as King of Scotland. All’s well that ends well. Polanski here inserts a brief, wordless sequence of Donalbain, Malcolm’s brother, visiting the Three Weird Sisters. It’s a haunting reflection of how Polanski perceives man’s true nature. The forces of order and goodness cannot last long when pitted against man’s innate cruelty and ambition. Polanski’s vision is nihilistic, if not anarchistic. I can’t help but imagine how Macbeth’s chilling words must have resonated with the long-suffering auteur:
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.