Wednesday, May 23, 2012

"It is the bloody business": Lady Macbeth's Complicity

Macbeth. Dir. Jeremy Freeston. Perf. Jason Connery, Helen Baxendale, and Graham McTavish. 1997. DVD. Hurricane Int'l, 2007.

I wrote a brief post on this film version of Macbeth some time ago (for which, q.v.), but, whether it was out of laziness or lack of technology, I did not include a film clip at that time.

Here's the clip and a question. In this version, the director has given Lady Macbeth some stage business that opens the question of her complicity in the murder of Duncan. Is she partly responsible? Is she entirely responsible, leading the innocent Macbeth down the garden path to murder? Is she entirely innocent of the deed herself?

Warning: The clip below is violent and bloody.


What do you think about that? Is that a fair portrayal of her character? Why or why not?

Links: The Film at IMDB.

Click below to purchase the film from amazon.com
(and to support Bardfilm as you do so).

    

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Bardfilm is normally written as one word, though it can also be found under a search for "Bard Film Blog." Bardfilm is a Shakespeare blog (admittedly, one of many Shakespeare blogs), and it is dedicated to commentary on films (Shakespeare movies, The Shakespeare Movie, Shakespeare on television, Shakespeare at the cinema), plays, and other matter related to Shakespeare (allusions to Shakespeare in pop culture, quotes from Shakespeare in popular culture, quotations that come from Shakespeare, et cetera).

Unless otherwise indicated, quotations from Shakespeare's works are from the following edition:
Shakespeare, William. The Riverside Shakespeare. 2nd ed. Gen. ed. G. Blakemore Evans. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997.
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