The whole thing revolves around Cotillard’s brilliant Lady Macbeth, and she is nothing less than captivating every time she appears.ĭirector and star Orson Welles’ Macbeth was only the fourth American-produced film adaptation of a Shakespeare play and helped set a template for decades. There is evidence in the text that the Macbeths had been considering their move on the throne for some time before the play begins, and Kurzel’s version provides some tragic motivation to make us believe it. Kurzel’s film is sometimes too earnest and baroque in its pacing, but the cast, which includes David Thewlis as King Duncan, is uniformly excellent. Macbeth wavers in their plan to murder King Duncan, and his wife must steel his resolve, telling him that she’d have killed her own baby if it meant following through with such a serious task. “I have given suck, and know/How tender ‘tis to love the babe that milks me,” as Lady Macbeth tells her husband in Act 1, Scene 7. Kurzel uses a dialogue-free prologue sequence to make implicit what Shakespeare's text hints at, the Macbeths had a child who died. Her icy performance as Lady Macbeth is the most compelling part of this straightforward, period-set adaptation starring Michael Fassbender. Maqbool wants to be with Tabu and out from under his boss’ thumb, for example, and the witches are transformed into a pair of corrupt cops who predict Maqbool’s moves.Īssassin's Creed director Justin Kurzel is lucky Marion Cotillard exists. Maqbool successfully streamlines some of the characters’ motivations, and deftly switches characters around.
The structure of Macbeth works surprisingly well when overlaid onto a Bollywood gangster flick, with Irrhan Khan proving effective and convincing as the ambitious Maqbool, who quickly finds himself in over his head. The chief lieutenant of a crime lord, Maqbool is also having an affair with his boss' mistress, Nimmi ( Tabu). The 2004 Indian crime thriller Maqbool is one such example, with the late, great Bollywood star Irrfan Khan as the title character. Still, it’s a testament to the universality of many of the Bard’s plays that their plots are flexible enough to withstand a variety of settings. The notion that all modern storytelling owes a blood debt to Shakespeare is best left for painfully earnest academic debate. Still, this version has held up quite well, and likely represents the opposite end of the visual spectrum from what Coen and company have up their sleeve. Polanski includes an unnecessary amount of nudity for a Shakespeare film, especially in the scene where Macbeth palavers with the entire coven of witches. It's a bloody, brooding film with strange surrealistic touches. Shot on location in some forbidding places around the British Isles, Polanski's Macbeth aimed for bleak period detail. Polanski’s first film after the tragic death of his wife Sharon Tate at the hands of Charles Manson's deranged followers is one of the bloodiest, gloomiest Shakespeare adaptations ever made. It all ends in tears, like any good tragedy. As for Banquo, he will “beget kings.” Macbeth and his wife Lady Macbeth ( Francesca Annis) collude to assassinate Duncan and take the throne. Macbeth ( Jon Finch), the Thane (or lord) of Cawdor, wins a decisive battle for King Duncan ( Nicholas Selby), and as he and his friend Banquo ( Martin Shaw) return from the war, three witches prophesize that Macbeth will next be awarded Thane of Glamis, then become king. The basic story of Macbeth remains essentially unchanged throughout most of the filmed adaptations, and Rosemary’s Baby director Roman Polanski's version hews close to the text. RELATED: From 'Romeo + Juliet' to 'West Side Story': Comparing Classic vs. In light of Joel Coen's stylized take on The Tragedy of Macbeth with Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand in the lead roles, here's a look at the 7 best cinematic adaptations of Macbeth, ranked. In film, the play has been adapted in straightforward adaptations, or as a muddy, dirty period piece, or as a Bollywood crime thriller.
In the '70s, Ian McKellan and Judi Dench played Macbeth and Lady Macbeth in an avant-garde-style production, while Alan Cumming played every part in an amazing one-man show, recasting the whole story as taking place in the mind of a mental patient.
Like many Shakespeare plays, Macbeth has proven to be incredibly flexible, having been staged in countless ways. It's one of William Shakespeare's greatest tragedies, a play with a name so synonymous with personal disaster that you can't even say it out loud in the theater world, simply referred to as "The Scottish Play" or "The Bard's Play".
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