© 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.

© 2005 John Murphy

Mad Max Macbeth

From the back of the box: “Sean Pertwee plays the painfully ambitious royal who schemes to murder so he can ascend to the throne in this superior version of William Shakespeare’s literary classic. Spurred by the pressure exerted by his equally power-hungry wife, Lady Macbeth (Greta Scacchi), the Thane conspires to kill, but is so overcome with guilt that he’s unable to wash the blood off his hands — literally and figuratively.”

I was aware of Sean Pertwee long before seeing his Macbeth. I first encountered the sandy-haired, gravelly-voiced actor as the honorable Hugh Beringar in the Cadfael mystery series starring Sir Derek Jacobi, and later as the eerily detached “Father” from the excellent (and criminally overlooked) action movie Equilibrium. My mom and two sisters took a fancy to his rugged features and mellifluous voice and so this movie was a must-see.

Sean Pertwee as Macbeth

Macbeth as a post-apocalyptic action flick? Why not? It works. Though I confess I had to stifle a laugh on first seeing Macbeth and Banquo zooming about the blasted heaths on motorcycles. And after their encounter with the three witches, the weird sisters quite literally dissemble into the air, transformed via homemade computer graphics from grimy bag ladies into kitsch computer pixels. Again, I politely stifled a laugh. Ergo, I was pretty skeptical for the first twenty minutes or so, but was ultimately won over by the quality of the performances and the production’s cohesive vision.

Greta Scacchi as Lady Macbeth

Greta Scacchi dominates the first portion of the movie as the woman of “undaunted mettle,” Lady Macbeth. Scacchi plays Lady M as on edge from the get-go, a neurotic and highly combustible force of nature. She’s sexy when she needs to be, but can turn on a dime and become a shrill-shrieking banshee as the occasion calls for it. Scacchi looked appropriately exhausted and spread-thin during the Act II, scene 2 nocturnal murder of Duncan. “My hands are of your color,” she says, heavy bags beneath her eyes, “But I shame to wear a heart so white.” And to a certain degree, she’s right. Up until that point, Lady M’s been wearing the pants in the family.

Sean Pertwee struck me at first as a dull and unconsidered Macbeth, too ball-busted by his wife, too much posturing in Bono shades and leather jackets. A solid Macbeth, if not inspired. But Pertwee’s initially lackluster quality proves to be a canny, calculated move on his part. Because it’s not until Macbeth has killed Duncan that Pertwee really steps up to the plate and knocks it out of the ballpark. Suddenly, the tables have turned. Macbeth has found his manhood (heretofore questioned by Lady M) through killing Duncan. He transforms from a meat-and-potatoes soldier under the thumb of his better half into a tyrannical Nihilistic monster. Pertwee, likewise, comes alive in the second half and commands the screen with his new found intensity. Even Lady M looks almost sick to hear her formerly “infirm of purpose” husband say later (in reference to the death of Banquo).

Come, seeling night,
Scarf up the tender eye of pitiful day,
And with thy bloody and invisible hand
Cancel and tear to pieces that great bond
Which keeps me pale! Light thickens, and the crow
Makes wing to the rooky wood.
Good things of day begin to droop and drowse,
Whiles night’s black agents to their preys do rouse.

Creepy. Macbeth’s transformation from loyal soldier to nihilist poet is complete.  Meanwhile, Macbeth’s wife, neglected, takes to pill-popping and drinking to fend off impending madness. There are highly visible character arcs in this production. It’s a fresh and fascinating interpretation, and probably the most lucid reading of the relationship (read: power struggle) between Macbeth and Lady Macbeth that I’ve seen on film.

The director, Michael Bogdanov, puts different spins on canonical scenes. The ghost of the murdered Banquo appearing at Macbeth’s dinner party is given a classic treatment. Rather than cowering in fear and horror of the ghost, as in most versions I’ve seen, this Macbeth leaps onto the dinner table, pulls a gun, and starts unloading rounds at the specter. I half expected him to say, with de Niro-like relish, “You talkin’ to me? You talkin’ to me?” When the ghost disappears, Macbeth turns and says to his horrified wife, “Being gone, I am a man again.” That line leapt out at me like never before, and made sense like never before.

Threatened masculinity becomes a central theme in this production. Macbeth tells his wife early in the play, “I dare do all that may become a man. Who dares do more is none.” Lady M acidly responds, “When you durst do it (murder Duncan), then you were a man.” The noble Macduff, Macbeth’s foil, learns of his family’s slaughter at the hands of the tyrant and openly weeps. Malcolm, true heir to the throne, tells him, “Dispute it like a man.” Macduff answers, “I shall do so; but I must also feel it as a man.” This production highlights the theme of manhood and threatened masculinity better than any others I’ve seen.

Appropriately, then, Pertwee plays a macho, swaggering Macbeth, determined to prove his masculinity. Macbeth’s last stand in the final act resembles Al Pacino’s gun-wielding Scarface, going down in a glorious blaze of bullets. High school teachers and university professors teaching this play, in search of good film adaptations, should take note of this production’s accessibility and relevancy. As a male college student, I can vouch for being compelled by all the gunplay and macho posturing, as well as Macbeth’s rock star fashion accoutrements and a pseudo-techno soundtrack. Though I love both Orson Welles’ and Roman Polanski’s versions of the play, and think the Trevor Nunn/Ian McKellen production best all around, this adaptation would play very well for younger audiences.

What the movie lacks in decent special effects it makes up for with intelligent and convincing characterizations by the actors and the visual imagination of the director. Like Welles’ equally money-strapped 1948 Macbeth, this version appears to have been produced on the relative cheap, but compensates with a vim, vigor, and imaginative vitality that sweeps the audience along. Clocking in at a lean 90 minutes, this Macbeth breezes by in a flurry of sound and fury. I thoroughly enjoyed it.