Those who can make you believe absurdities, will make you commit atrocitie
—Voltaire
Macbeth William Shakespeare 1978 directed by Trevor Nunn.
Starring Ian McKellan and Judi Dench.
Through his actors, Nunn preys on the audience’s imagination. Instead of spoon-feeding us a steady, predictable diet of horror show gore and carnage, Nunn emphasizes the imagistic poetry of Shakespeare’s language. The language, channeled through such superior interpreters as McKellen and Dench, takes on an expressionistic life of its own. “Full of scorpions is my mind,” Macbeth confesses to his wife. The horror is internal, not external, and Shakespeare’s words have a terrifying immediacy that only the imagination can do justice. I felt a chill down my spine as Macbeth says, “Light thickens, and the crow makes wing to the rooky wood. Good things of day begin to droop and drowse, whilst night’s black agents to their prey do rouse.” The barren set, then, is a mindscape, a blank canvas on which the audience paints its own fears.
Read the rest of the review here
Ambition
Murder
Remorse
The price for her...
The price for him...
5 comments:
I borrowed, from the library, I think, the 1980 BBC version of Hamlet (dir. Rodney Bennet
Here and Here
I remember being a little disturbed by Derek Jacobi's twitchiness at first. But then it seemed that he had animated this miserable, tormented creature, not as a morose depressive (as many Hamlets are played), but as a sort of victim of a wildly gesticulating intellect, driving his energy painfully, fitfully, obsessively forward.
It was, in the end, so captivating, and penetrating, and troubling, and moving, and Disturbing! That I wish everyone would see it, of course; because it tells you almost everything you need to know about human frailty, and about the play, and drama.
Patrick Stewart, tv's best Shakespearean actor in a weekly series - (damning with faint praise? but yes, he's always good) - is Claudius, the 'wicked' uncle. But he plays him with such depth of motivation, that you actually sympathize with him, and wish Hamlet would just shut his mouth, and let life continue, in relative peace for everyone!
That's some great set of performances. (And the writing's not bad either, huh?)
Liam there is no Shakespeare on DVD that beats this Macbeth I assure you I am a total sucker for this kind of thing and I have everything you can dream of.
This Macbeth is so beyond anything you could ever see and it will leave you shattered.
I know Jacobi's Hamlet, I also know Kevin Klein's and I like them both very much, but i had the fortune of seeing Daniel Day Lewis flanked by Dench as Gertrude and Anthony Hopkins as Claudius at the National Theatre and that maked my generation as har as Hamlets go.
But this Macbeth is worth even buying. I promise you it will mark you for life. It has me and i have known it and had it for years, first on VHS and now on DVD.
Re Patrick Stewart.
Don't be fooled by the Star Trek bit, he is an excellent actor and very powerful when giving off in some Shakespeare role that suites him well.
He was an excellent Leoontes in The Winter’s Tale which I saw him do at the RSC co-starring Jemma Jones and he remains the definitive Leontes for me.
He also auditioned me when I was 19 years old at the Gulidhall School Of Music & Drama where he threw my original staging out and hade me do my Benedick cramped under a chair, instead of prancing around the stage being grand.
I always appreciated that piece of direction as it served me for life: He focused text, situation and made me see that acting is not about it working for me, as much as it working for the text and the play and then the audience.
That's beautiful, a beautiful vignette. Thanks for that! Wonderful.
I will make sure to see this. I've been meaning to watch a production of Macbeth, in a nice coincidence. I don't know the play, and feel interested, or ready, to watch/read it.
Shakespeare, and much of the classical canon, are like that. Works speak to you, ask you to get them into your system, at certain points, certain junctures.
We'll see why Macbeth has been calling...I'll let you know. I'm hoping it's on DVD (I assume it is).
bests,
L
Any store should have it...if not then Amazon of course.
http://www.amazon.com/Macbeth-McKellen-Thames-Shakespeare-Collection/dp/B0002TVWYW/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/104-6820392-0264722?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1190528732&sr=1-1
17$ it's a total bargain.
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