The Tragedy of Macbeth

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source: The Tragedy of Macbeth

Denzel and Frances cannot Save this dismal attempt. Maybe it's the words! Maybe it's facial expressions they make at times! Maybe it's the lack of cohesion! Maybe it's that they just need to leave MacBeth in it's written form to be performed on an old stage and stop trying to make it into a movie. Fails to pull off what Shakespeare intended.

If you are looking for the Shakespearean drama in any form, or expect anything similar to its great 'reproductions' into other cultures like the Kurosawa films, you better stay away from this apple-netflix-hollywood-blockbuster claptrap. I gave it one star to show how bad it can be but I will remove even this one star.

I wanted to love it and normally I'm biased towards arty films but in order to properly enjoy this I would've needed some modern-English subtitles. If you've studied the play already or you're familiar with the text you will enjoy this but if you haven't - most of Shakespeare's genius may be lost in translation. By the time you've unpicked some insightful middle-English phrasing, you'll have missed the next 3 lines. Maybe I'm just too dumb for it :)

No need to go over the plot. The film was in black and white in order to convey the theme of darkness. This could have been done filmed in color as they did in the Michael Fassbender version which I liked more than this one. I think some coloration such as "Sin City" for the red of the blood and gold of the crown would have worked very well for emphasis. On the face of things the casting is dubious, but didn't turn out as bad as it could have been. The speech was slow and deliberate so even I could understand it as no one was attempting to try out for the Renaissance Fair.

When it comes to Shakespeare, you can't bumble through you lines. As well as you may know your lines, as well as you might think they are making sense to you, you can't neglect the audience completely, assuming they're following your every word. To do so shows complete disrespect for your viewer. I love D and it's fantastic to see him in this kind of adaptation. He's one of my favourite actors and if anyone can nail Macbeth, it's him, he's a skilled and developed actor. But Joel's clearly WAY above his head here. While the bland monochromes might be stylish, unfortunately the performances are equally monochrome and vacuous. The mumbling, monologues and utterances along with the soulless performances leave you brain dead in less than 5 minutes. I did my best and I felt sorely disappointed after about 20 minutes, that's all I could stand. I've seen school plays lay on the bard better than this garbage. Macbeth = Destroyed.