I am always interested in the ways a Shakespeare adaptation can be morphed on the screen. This one, by RSC, does it well. It mirrors Stalin's rise and lust for power; there is a gigantic headshot emblazoned on a tapestry in the same vein, infamous moustache and all, of Patrick Stewart once he takes the throne in the dining hall. As they talk of sword fights, they brandish machine guns and weapons of far more lethality. This does not detract from the original play; the climatic fight between Macbeth and Macduff is done via knives, right after he thoroughly douses himself in alcohol and prepares for death. There are other touches that reinforce this contextual setting. Soviet documentary footage chimes in from dusty television sets and radios. Mechanical elevators creak sombrely and are later used for the metaphorical descent to hell for some of our dearly departed characters. The three witches become pale- faced nurses. Their introduction is fantastic; the horror aesthetic works well because of the seedy lighting, sound design which assaults our ears with scratches, screams and harrowing distortion and the sudden manner in which they are unveiled. Their prophecies become harrowing shrieks as they tend to lifeless patients which sudden crackle with life. The sets are few and sparsely decorated to great effect; there is nothing more illusory than a cold, expansive dining hall which the gramophone struggles to fill with dance music, nothing more grimy than the lone basin where Lady Macbeth sees gushing wounds, red gashes of blood and ruined clothes which she tries futilely to wash away. A leaky faucet sprays blood rather than pure water. The rusting claustrophobic walls close in on our characters in moments of great grief and anger and lust, and we see them for the monsters they truly are. Both Patrick Stewart and Kate Fleetwood's mastery of the material is clear. Their stage experience and familiarity with the roles allows Goold to use long takes for the soliloquies which heightens the tension and emotion their characters are going through. Fleetwood is terrifying in that first monologue, and then we abruptly cut and she is meekly scrubbing the dirty kitchen walls as Macbeth returns. They embrace with a violent sensuality (which later becomes uneven as the power dynamics of their relationship shift). She is of course initially more motivated to commit regicide than she is, but pulls off the domestic and matronly persona well, even as her mind is scheming beneath. She interrupts that conflicted soliloquy in the kitchen by Macbeth, thrusting her agency and drive into the scene as Stewart agonises over what is a clear sin. Later, Macbeth again confronts the consequences of such a deed, and the camera slowly zooms in and plunges Stewart into pitch black as he finishes with "to hell". His brutal descent into lust and power is accentuated by Stewart; he mimes the shooting of Banquo from afar in the idyllic courtyard, and later stares Macduff's innocent family in the eyes as he brandishes a knife. This kickstarts a Godfather-esque sequence where murders are committed over a haunting hymn and Macbeth's position on the throne is solidified for a little while. When the affluent and benevolent Duncan gathers his loyal subjects in his office, he pauses for a moment before announcing his son Malcolm as the next in line. The camera is however situated behind them, over their shoulder, and when Duncan makes that pivotal decision, Stewart is pushed into sharp focus; we see every ounce of disgust and confusion in his face after the witches promised a different outcome. I am reminded of a similar scene in RSC's Hamlet where Stewart as Claudius looks to address Hamlet first, but rebuffs him for the lesser Laertes. These little cinematic touches are great at unveiling subtext and character reactions that would be harder to spot on the stage. This adaptation is quite well done.

This BBC production is upsetting, unnerving, often horrifying, unforgettable, and very difficult with which to find flaw. It's set it Soviet Russia, with Macbeth as a Stalin-like figure, engendering imagery that is both horrifying and picture-perfectly realized. One of the great advantages of this film is that is it a (very cinematic) recorded version of a stage production after a long and successful run -- so each member of the ensemble cast in intimately familiar with his or her role and its nuances. Rupert Goold proves himself both a "visionary" director and an actor's one, as every performance is shudderingly truthful and inventive -- and both performances and settings are rife with small interpolations that only add substance and effectiveness to the production -- Macbeth talking to the two overwhelmed murderers while making a sandwich, Banquo killed on a train, the porter bitter and delivering his speech while drinking and watch Soviet parades. Chief among the cast, of course, is Sir Patrick Stewart, who immediately cements himself as a great Macbeth. He displays extraordinary dynamism, range, understanding, clarity, and emotional truth in the role. His Macbeth is forceful and powerful but at the same time vulnerable and uncertain. We feel first his struggle, then his guilt and of all his pervading mania for certainty. The moment just before his death when he finally dismissed his grasping at the vision of the (unnervingly nurse- attired witches) for that certainty with a still "Enough" is astounding. I have difficulty imagining a more affecting rendition of the "tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow" speech than Sir Patrick's absolute nihilism here. Suzanne Burden is also a horrifying Lady Macbeth; her honest hunger for power through her husband, her recoil at his disruption of dinner with his vision of Banquo making her not sympathetic but comprehensible as a real human and thus the more uncanny. Michael Feast also deserves special mention as an excellent Macduff, carrying off an amazing silence after he learns the death of his sons. The Soviet trove of imagery is rich, enhancing the play with suggestions of history that we may know (Siward happens to remind me a lot of Shostokovich here) lending it a well-realized look of decay and hopelessness. Devices such as the Stalinist-style portrait of Macbeth, the rolling tape, the bugs, &c are recreated with precision, fall into that "uncanny valley" with their level of familiarity and hint parallels with the events of the play without intruding on them. In all, great production and direction as well as performances from a tight ensemble cast -- all brimming with creativity from all edges -- create a great production of the play that is a searing, nightmarish vision, complimented by a performance in the lead role that seems to me to be for the ages, and is now my favorite of those I've had the chance to see. There have been and will be many performances of Macbeth that are _different_ than this one, but I doubt I'll see one that is _better_.

The richness of Shakespeare's plays, and the vagueness of their settings, lends them to many adaptations and interpretations. This version of Macbeth, the "Scottish play", doesn't feel particularly Scottish, more Orwellian, and Patrick Stewart plays the central character less as an opportunistic chancer out of his depth, and more as a deranged psychopathic tyrant: if the film resembles any other, it's 'Downfall', the story of the last days of Hitler. As always when watching Shakespeare, one is stunned by the sheer number of brilliant phrasings that have entered general usage from his works. But Macbeth is an odd play dramatically: the main action occurs offstage, the leavening self-referential humour present in 'Hamlet' is here lacking, and there are few appealing characters. In Kenneth Brannagh's version of 'Hamlet', for example, I really enjoyed Derek Jacobi's ambiguous Claudius; but in this story, there is little other than war and death. As a film, it also falls between two stools, as it is shot neither naturalistically, nor with the brilliant invention of Baz Luhrmann's 'Romeo + Juliet'; rather, it feels like a stage play jazzed up with the occasional camera trick. So I'm not sure this is the best of Shakespeare's tragedies, nor that this is my favourite production; but it's certainly intense. Indeed, if this was once popular entertainment, one can only regret the undemanding nature of modern tastes.

This is by far the best Macbeth I have ever seen. It is definitely not just a camera filming a stage production, it is a horror film. Everything from the acting to the lighting was fresh and original.Patrick Stewart and Kate Fleetwood are chillingly superb and the supporting cast just as good. There was not a weak link.Some people have said that Patrick Stewart is too old to play this part, however there is absolutely no indication of age anywhere in the text. In fact, the age of Macbeth compared to that of his wife's actually helps support Macbeth's sudden lust for power. He is a man who was satisfied to be the star military general, but when he married a young, ambitious (crazy) woman, it gave him a reason to want more.This is a better quality film than almost everything in theaters today.