That's not like "On Gazing into Chapman's Homer."
I can't believe I wasted bandwidth downloading this.
It was misrepresented.
The big scare scene, the slaughter of the Macduffs, was nasty: but if
Polanski was trying to purge the demons of Sharon Tate's death, he had
to go some greater distance.
The climactic fight was okay but Macbeth did not suffer enough. Then
again, with John Stride as Macbeth, why bother? He was the ultimate
lightweight, and appeared to be totally over his head. I have loved the
language of that play forever and Stride sounded like he was reading his
grocery list.
What can one say about Francesca Annis except OMG? She was beautiful,
had a lovely voice, the sleepwalking scene was a Big Deal, but she had
all the evil and burdened soul of a piece of paper. I adored her as
Lily Langtry but the ghastly Lady Macbeth was a few miles beyond her.
Wonderful mise en scene. Some really clever and chilling moments, e.g.,
the ambush of Banquo and the silencing of the two murderers. Yet
Macbeth himself never seemed capable of the weight of vileness required
to make this stuff work.
The bear-baiting scenes: I almost threw up. An oddo commentary that
animal cruelty was truly horrible here while cruelty to human beings
hardly registered.
Where o where can one obtain videos of the Peter Brook Lear and
McKellan's Richard III. I'll even take Hopkins' as Titus Andronicus.
Anything to cleanse my head of what Polanski did to Macbeth. All the
perfumes of Arabia will never get that crap out of it.
ken
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Ken Wolman
http://awfulrowing.wordpress.com
http://opensalon.com/blog/kenneth_wolman
http://wearethecure.org/friends/cids-memory-p-394.html
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