Upon meeting the three evil witches in his way and listening to his greedy wife, Macbeth, a young courageous and ambitious warrior, makes his mind to kill the king to have the throne.
It's a model of how to stay true to Shakespeare and film without sacrificing one for the other, and if that wasn't evident in 1971, it ought to be obvious now.
Chicago Reader
July 03, 2008
The wide-screen visuals swamp the dialogue, and the thematics have been turned inside out -- but that's what movie adaptations ought to do.
I don't know that there's a clear winner in the contest for Roman Polanski's bleakest depiction of human nature. But "Macbeth" is indisputably in the running.
