Great Performances: Macbeth (2010)
Season 39, Episode 3
10/10
Immediately riveting; inescapably enchanting
6 June 2021
Let no one doubt for a single moment: One may call this a great performance, but it is ever more an essential watch, for all. This rendition of 'Macbeth' is outstanding among even the most outstanding that cinema has to offer.

I tend to have a hard time engaging with contemporary re-imaginings of classic theater. The anachronism of language, if not also behavior, is glaring, and for the relative rarity that one has opportunity to engage with a work, I'd broadly rather view a period piece. So those instances which can break through that barrier I've erected are the more welcome for it - and this most of all may be a turning point.

There is only one name in the cast that I'm familiar with, but everyone here puts forth a masterful performance to which I can draw no comparison. Yet more so: Kate Fleetwood, as Lady Macbeth, parades a gripping presence of beauty and stature that belies terrible ambition and dread intention, an unrestrained intensity that spirals further into madness with the progression of the narrative. She is matched in that excellence, note for note, only by Sir Patrick Stewart, demonstrating vividly that for every role on film or television that he has embodied with unparalleled ability and charisma, the stage and the Bard is where we best witness the entirety of his intelligence. No one who has ever seen Stewart play a part beyond this 'Macbeth' has ever seen in full the skill he commands, lest they have had privilege to see him in person, in a theater. I'm simply in awe.

Shifting the tale from a Scotland of centuries' past to an Eastern Europe of decades not so long gone is jarring, surely, but ultimately an exquisite and well-conceived choice. The barbarity of Lord and Lady Macbeth is painted with a crimson more rich for being of a time and place more pointedly familiar, where political purges shucked many loose of their mortal coil. The sets, lighting, costumes, props, makeup, and effects are exceptional, as is the keen eye of director Rupert Goold whose precise vision captures these extraordinary achievements of acting, every fine nuance in person and detail in place, and every best shot and method of depiction.

The thrills conveyed in this re-imagined, timeless story of thirst for power, blood, and madness are too given new life when examined in such a manner. They are joined by no small sense of horror at the great tyranny of Macbeth, and more directly so at the visitation of the Three Witches of Shakespeare's verses. Seen here as nurses or servant, the cauldrons they stir are the seeming bodies of the deceased; the stews they prepare, the organs within. The violence of this classic is sensational in the writing, yet not so indecently visceral in its cinematic realization as to excite us to recoil - though certainly grotesque nonetheless.

And through it all, the unaltered language of some 400 years ago is not an obstacle, but a reverie. More plainspoken words would draw forth some ease of interpretation for modern ears, yet I judge would also be needlessly tawdry in their presentation. There is an invaluable, ageless poetry conferred upon the bloodiest of deeds when dressed in verbiage so flowery, so far removed from our daily experience. However one thinks of William Shakespeare, to attend to his works with vocal expression as it is written is to journey outside of ourselves, even as we sit in comfort in our homes, or in a theater, or even beholding a production more closely resembling our acquaintance.

This production holds a grandness and a gravity in its nature that runs counter to the bloodbath of its content. Where once I would have balked, I now admire: Goold's 'Macbeth' is as worthy of an audience as any version on film of a play from previous eras. Save for the youngest of possible viewers, for whom the violence is perhaps too much to bear, this earns a hearty recommendation not just for fans of theater generally, of Shakespeare specifically, or of Patrick Stewart, but for all comers.

Truly magnificent. Bravo, bravo, bravo!
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