Harockerce What a beautiful movie!

Acensbart Excellent but underrated film

Mabel Munoz Just intense enough to provide a much-needed diversion, just lightweight enough to make you forget about it soon after it’s over. It’s not exactly “good,” per se, but it does what it sets out to do in terms of putting us on edge, which makes it … successful?

Clarissa Mora The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

chaswe-28402 In spite of the professionals involved, this production is inherently amateurish. The actors give an impression of simply reading their lines, not living them. Perhaps it's the play's fault. It's stuffed with even more quotations than Hamlet. The words are so familiar that it seems impossible for any stage performance to do them justice. Watching this version it struck me that I must virtually know the whole text by heart already, and the actors were not giving these passages the delivery they required. Most of the speeches need to be thundered out with heavy, over-dramatic emphasis, not self-consciously thrown away. Macbeth questions himself to start with, sure, until his wife screws him to the sticking-point, but once in for a penny he's in for a pound. That's the way it's written. The devil damn thee black, thou cream-faced loon ! What happened to that line ? It seemed to be completely re-written and tamely paraphrased. Williamson is an odd and different actor. He's watchable, but sometimes strangely unconvincing. He was best in the Bofors Gun, and Laughter in the Dark, both stories where the main character is his own victim. Macbeth is not fully as determinedly self- destructive as Williamson makes him out to be, and as he is portrayed in this production. Macbeth, as the play's opening tells us, was a dynamic, decisive man, conned into his crimes by his wife and the witches. Outside forces. Shakespeare is frequently concerned with the question of free will. Was Macbeth fated to take the course of action that he did ? Had he a choice ? This topic also arises in other plays.

clivey6 This was my first viewing of Macbeth. I didn't really rate it. Williamson's delivery is always a bit Leonard Rossiter, which adds some welcome and not inappropriate humour to his Hamlet, but really doesn't work for this character. Sometimes his hysterical throes with Lady Macbeth put me in mind of Rigsby and Miss Jones.The two leads don't have much chemistry or sexual chemistry. Shakespeare cuts to the chase in this play; no sooner have the witches voiced his destiny, he's licking his lips and plotting, no sooner has Lady Macbeth been informed of this via letter, she's turning murderous! It may be that the surviving play is abridged, some say. But for this to be convincing we have to see something unpleasant or visceral in the two leads just waiting to be untapped by fate, and I didn't see it here. Like, Cherie Blair would be a good Lady Macbeth, and the ambitious Gordon Brown her husband (okay, that's an unlikely alliance!) Here, you don't get the sense that their personal chemistry is the catalyst for murder and downfall. You just think, 'Are they crazy? What are they playing at?'

Robert J. Maxwell Sometimes it's not so good to be the king. Especially if, at your wife's prompting, you've slaughtered a number of people, including a rival's wife and children, to get "the golden round." Besides, who wants to be king of Scotland, eating all that haggis, except maybe Idi Amin? I enjoyed reading the play, partly because it was short and relatively simple to follow. Then I saw this on PBS when it was first shown in the US and was impressed especially by Nicole Williamson's performance as MacBeth. Now, having just seen it again on DVD, I'm not so sure why. When MacBeth is his normal self, he's just fine. But when he gets agitated he tends to roar out his speeches and punctuate them with a hoarse, feral, indrawn breath. After a while you begin almost to disregard the speech and concentrate on the ragged, half-hysterical inspirations. This may prove to be the case especially if your state of consciousness has been, in certain respects, subject to chemical alteration. A word to the wise.The responsibility may not lie entirely with Williamson's performance though. On this DVD, everyone seemed to take loud breaths, whether the situation demanded it or not. And I had more trouble than I remembered, just following the dialog, so the problem may have to do with technical aspects of the sound recording rather than with the acting. In any case, Williamson's performance may be overwrought on film but fine for a stage. He does everything but explode.And when he sneers at fate, he really sneers. His reading of "tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow...." is slow and "important." But it's a heck of a way to react to the death of your wife, your "poor chuck." That's as much Shakespeare's fault as Williamson's. The script has its clumsy moments. As I recall, the play wasn't even clear about whether MacBeth was killed and had his head lopped off on-stage or off-stage. (Maybe both.) But with all that, how can you torpedo a play with such impact? You can't. Or -- well, I guess you could, but that doesn't happen here. What a play! Lady MacBeth with her sleep disorder -- a combination of REM sleep ideation without the usual accompanying paralysis. And I must say, all the ham aside, Williamson's reading of "Is this a dagger which I see before me?", the first of his hallucinatory episodes, is powerfully done. I don't fault MacBeth for fouling the feast at which Banquo's ghost appears. Oh, sure, it looks freaky enough. But I've known ordinary people who would be eager to spoil a big dinner through some imagined temporary infirmity -- and enjoy every minute of it.This particular rendition of the play evidently isn't everyone's favorite but I'd recommend it. You have to get through any problems with the audio.

pdoniger Although there are a number of flaws in this production of Macbeth, it is worth viewing for several reasons. First, Nicol Williamson, though he fails to make this Macbeth work completely, is always interesting; probably, this is due to his intelligence. One can always see what he is getting at, even when he fails to get there or when we disagree with his interpretation (and I disagree with much of this one -- especially the "Tomorrow and tomorrow" sequence). The gradual shift from a heroic, conscience-concerned warrior to a cold-blooded and ruthless tyrant is clear if not always heartfelt.Second, most of the text is clear and unadulterated (some minor changes, including the happy cutting of the Hecuba scenes, which are not by Shakespeare anyway, actually help move the play along). The cast and director have worked so carefully to illuminate the text, characters, and situations that this particular version might be the best choice for school use.Finally, Jane Lapotaire gives a brilliant tour-de-force performance as Lady Macbeth. For one thing, she is sexy, which apparently some reviewers seem to find objectionable, but which is quite accurate for Lady M. Why else would she have to call on the powers of evil to "unsex" her? Also, she is clearly in love with her husband and not with her own ambitions. It is imperative in any production of Macbeth that the marriage is based in love and devotion; otherwise, the tragedy is lost! When this Lady Macbeth tries to calm her manic husband during the banquet scene, we can feel her anguish over the loss of their former relationship (and her part in causing it), anguish that easily turns to madness the next time we see her. The sleepwalking scene is beautifully built by re-living not only the text, but the actions of the Act 2 murder of King Duncan and its effects on the Macbeths. Lapotaire is one of the great post WWII actresses, trained in the great British tradition, and her presence in this production makes the viewing worthwhile in itself.Don't miss it!