Macbeth
(1971/Polanski/Columbia/Sony/Criterion Collection Blu-ray)
Picture:
B+ Sound: B Extras: B Film: B-
In
the essay accompanying the Criterion Collection's release of Roman
Polanski's 1971 adaptation of Macbeth,
critic Terrence Rafferty writes the film wasn't received well upon
its initial release ''for a variety of lousy reasons.'' Chief among
them: the insistence many had to find some connection between the
staging, extreme violence, and gore of the film with the 1969 murder
of Sharon Tate and others by the Manson Family. Macbeth
was the first film Polanski made after the murders, ''and lazy
critics tended to interpret the movie's handful of gory scenes as
reflections of the director's personal experience,'' Rafferty writes,
''rather than as faithful and appropriate recreations of the play's
terrible violence.''
With
all due respect to Rafferty, it's not a lazy observation just because
you disagree with it. It's possible for the violence in Polanski's
Macbeth
to exist as both faithful and exorcisiary - and it does - and to
dismiss the possibility so disdainfully is foolish and an obfuscation
of one's responsibility as a critic. And, frankly, the only way this
Macbeth
remains relevant is as a grand cinematic poem of grief.
Adapted
by Polanski and theater critic Kenneth Tynan, produced by Playboy's
Hugh Hefner and starring Jon Finch as Macbeth and Francesca Annis as
Lady Macbeth, Macbeth
is a relentlessly faithful adaptation of Shakespeare's most visceral
major tragedies. It follows the text so closely, in fact, that the
film feels stagy. This is especially true when it moves indoors -
castle yards, dining halls, bedrooms - where scenes are usually lit
in such a way that shots are drained of depth and life. There's a
feeling of actors occupying built sets rather than found interior
environments. These moments are jarring, since the ones beyond
castle walls - on body-strewn beaches, wind-swept moors, lonely mud
roads - are quite beautiful.
Where
the film's faithfulness diverges from staginess, though, is in the
violence. The play is bloody, as is the film. But Polanski pushes
things to the extreme. Take Macbeth's assassination of King Duncan.
Polanski imbues these scenes with the kind of dread and brooding
common to a Hammer Horror film. It helps that Macbeth's castle,
where the murder takes place, looms gargoyle-like on an angular hill,
backlit by a mad-scientist lightning storm. There are sumptuous
moments of low-light cinematography where rooms are lit by fires and
candles, giving faces and walls a warm yet apocalyptic hue. The
music that strikes up when Macbeth sees the ghostly dagger leading
him to Duncan's chamber - screeching brass, flitting strings - rounds
out the moment's baroque sensibility.
But
then the murder occurs, and it oozes gore. Macbeth repeatedly
plunges his dagger into the king's chest, coating his clothes in
blood. The death blow is a graphic stab through the throat that
spurts more blood on to Macbeth's vestments. The next morning, when
Duncan's body is discovered, so are those of his attendants - both
brutally mutilated, their heads and limbs chopped off, everything
lying in pools of blood. Polanski shoots this scene with the urgency
and frenzy of a documentary as the rest of the characters are
confronted with a shocking tableaux of violence.
It's
impossible to watch these scenes today and not dwell on the murder of
Sharon Tate or the brutality of Charles Manson and his Family. By
all accounts, that real-life murder scene was a grisly nightmare that
shook even hardened, seen-it-all detectives. And it's inconceivable
that Polanski didn't have this in mind when he made Macbeth. Indeed,
it's hard to watch the film and not see Polanski grapple not only
with Tate's murder but the culture that bred it.
There's
this strange, Aquarian vibe permeating the film that Polanski is
highly critical of, which starts with the casting. Polanski put
20-somethings in the roles of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, reconceiving
the characters as young, power-mad strivers. This flew in the face
of Shakespearean tradition that viewed the couple as mediocre
middle-aged aristocracy desperately grasping at a last chance for
crowns they were never fated to wear. The youth of the two main
characters fundamentally alters the tone and impulse of the play, and
it allows Polanski to graft on other signifiers. Macbeth, the
murderer and butcher who upends the natural order with psychotic
delusions of grandeur, wears long hair and a giant medallion around
his next designating him the Thane of Gondor. Macduff (Terence
Bayler), the hero who restores order, meanwhile looks more like
Elliott Gould circa M*A*S*H:
shaggy and loose, but decidedly not a hippie and relatively
conservative in comparison to Macbeth.
Then
there are the witches. The characters are mere supernatural
catalysts in the play, but under Polanski's direction they become
malignant stand-ins for the commune culture of the late '60s. The
witches are of the earth; they're dirty, lewd, degenerates; they
meet, naked, in secret covens where they concoct mind-altering
psychotropic potions; they stand opposed to Christianity, indeed all
religion; they are agents of doom, setting Macbeth on his bloody path
murderous self-gratification - and Polanski has nothing but contempt
for them. It doesn't take much to read a broader condemnation of the
unwashed hippies, living in the deserts and hills of Southern
California, that spawned Manson and his followers.
This
all sort of crescendos in the immensely troubling and horrifying
scene where soldiers, at Macbeth's direction, invade Macduff's
castle. They rape Macduff's servants, murder his son, and, it's
implied, rape and murder his wife. The rank depravity on display
here is brutal and visceral, as it should be. But it also casts
Macbeth in the Manson role, sending his messengers of chaos out to a
manse to wreak wholesale slaughter. It's the second time in the film
that Polanski seemingly restages the Tate murder, and it's the moment
where he fully divests himself (and us) from any sort of empathy for
Macbeth (if any ever existed) and makes his most decisive
condemnation of the Age of Aquarius.
With
scenes like that in mind, it's difficult for me to fathom how someone
can watch Macbeth, either today or in 1971, and not walk away feeling
like they just witnessed a very public display of grief management.
Perhaps that comes with Polanski directing the film. But, remember,
he chose this story - this bloody, violent tragedy - to be the first
one he told after Tate's murder. That can't be a coincidence. And
any insinuation that it's less than fair to consider the very raw
pain permeating the making of the film when discussing it or
considering its merits is, at best, negligent. To excise Polanski's
circumstances from his Macbeth does both him and the film a
disservice, to say nothing of viewers. Indeed, that element imbues
the film with an energy and potency that elevates it above mere
adaptation. Without it, Macbeth
is just another Shakespeare movie; with it, the film is a work of
art.
As
you would expect from a Criterion release, its Macbeth Blu-ray is top
of the line.
The
new 4K digital restoration, overseen by Polanski, is sumptuous from
original 35mm camera elements and even excellent 35mm reversal color
materials, as shot with the Todd-AO 35 anamorphic lenses that tend to
be underrated by legendary Director of Photography Gilbert Taylor,
B.S.C. (Polanski's Repulsion
and Cul-De-Sac,
Dr.
Strangelove,
the original Star
Wars,
Hitchcock's Frenzy),
presented here in 2.35 X 1, 1080p digital High Definition. Those
low-light moments in castles are beautiful, as are many of the
sweeping sun-drenched vistas and dusky battlefields. Some points
felt a little soft or washed out, but there weren't so many as to be
distracting. And there seemed to be little, if any, visible grain.
On
the audio side, the film is dialogue driven with some moments of
sword-clanging action. In other words, it doesn't really stretch the
limits of home theater systems. Still, the 3.0 surround DTS-HD MA
(Master Audio) lossless track sounds great. Voices are crisp and
clear, and background elements - boots scraping on stone and wood,
swords being unsheathed, rustling trees, the squishy hustle bustle of
serfs working in muddy castle lands - are wonderfully rendered.
In
terms of extras, there are a lot here: Toil
and Trouble: Making ''Macbeth''
- a new documentary that features interviews with Polanski and Annis,
among others; a 1971 documentary about the film, Polanski
Meets Macbeth;
a 1971 interview with Tynan from an episode of The
Dick Cavett Show;
a segment from a 1972 episode of the British TV show Aquarius
featuring interviews with Polanski and theater director Peter Coe;
trailers; and Rafferty's essay in the booklet. Your mileage with
these extras will depend on how into the film you are. They offer
interesting insight into the making of the film and how Polanski and
Tynan came to it. There's not a lot of earth-shaking material here,
but it does provide value context for the film.
-
Dante A. Ciampaglia
