- Commentary on the film "Macbeth"
"Macbeth" is adapted from one of Shakespeare's four tragedies of the same name. It is an American film directed by the famous Polish director Roman Polanski.
At the beginning of the film, a blood-soaked sunset shines on the beach, and three women dressed in black, looking like witches, perform a strange ritual on the sand, like a heretic Mass - they put a short sword in the sand. They fell into a hand buried in the ground. After the ceremony, they murmured a spell and left slowly, disappearing into the mist that came upon them. After the mist dissipated, a story about fate and betrayal, This opened the curtain. .
At the same place, a bloody slaughter had just ended, and the general Macbeth and his friend Banco returned to their fiefs, and they met three witches on the way. Banquo's descendants would become kings. What happened next fulfilled the witch's statement, making Macbeth kill the king who came to his castle to give him a reward at night under the circumstance of greed, and became the king's successor under the election of the nobles, but he also Afraid of the witch's prophecy left to Banco, he ordered the murder of him and his son, and wiped out the clan of him and the king's son Malcolm. In a bloody massacre, Bancor's son and Malcolm survived. He came down and assembled his army to take revenge on Macbeth. With the prophecies of the witches being fulfilled one by one, Macbeth finally went to his own demise. .
Macbeth, an opportunist who is not entirely cunning, has witnessed how greed and fear can devour a person since the prophecies began to circle in his mind. He kept deceiving himself, kept confirming prophecies, kept resisting fate, and in the end, he found that even his last hope was false - the witch said that he would not die at the hands of those born by women, When he was full of joy and thought that he could defend the empty city alone and be invincible, Banco's son Macduff told him that he was born by caesarean section. At that moment, Macbeth's confident and contemptuous face instantly stiffened, and we could clearly see the endless fear and despair on his face. Finally, in the duel with Macduff, Macbeth's head was cut off, and every soldier and nobleman laughed at him and laughed at his head. From the moment he put on the crown, the thing that scared him the most finally happened. .
In the film, there is another character that cannot but be mentioned, that is Lady Macbeth. This woman has supported his husband from beginning to end, and she is an important driving force in his husband's psychological transformation-at the moment when his husband is most hesitant, it is because of her persuasion that Macbeth finally kills the king and kills the king. In the end, in a trance, she left this world before her husband. Right or wrong, the hard work and sacrifice she made for her husband is still great, and the love between them is touching. But it was precisely because of her blind connivance to her husband that her husband's mutation was caused, and under his influence, she was also destroyed.
There is no doubt that this is a story about human nature, which is dark enough and hopeless. In the film, we are constantly destroying, rebuilding, and destroying ourselves again from the perspective of Macbeth. In front of fate, he is manipulated like a doll, Being teased, step by step towards death. Not only him, but in fact, all beings in the story have a strong sense of destiny - it was fate that arranged their past, it was fate that foresaw their future, it was fate that brought them down, and it was fate that caused this immortal tragedy. In the face of fate, all efforts seem weak, and all struggles seem meaningless. .
Under the profound theme, the audio-visual language of this film is quite skillful, and the master's skills are fully demonstrated.
In terms of the overall visual style, the film has not been greatly influenced because it is an adaptation of a stage play. The dialogue between the characters and the style of the scenes are relatively realistic and have a very realistic style. However, in some important bridges In the first paragraph, the film has a lot of surrealism, and the two styles are mixed with each other, which did not produce any adverse reactions, but made the film more exciting and full of mystery. And although the story is bizarre, but Polanski can still logically deduct the behavior of everyone in the story, and make the whole story fascinating. Under the above methods, with a large number of psychological monologues, it will increase the audience's sense of substitution. We seem to follow Macbeth's psychological activities, constantly wandering in fear and fantasy, and finally ending our lives on the verge of collapse. Not only him, Banco and other characters also use the same technique, which will better lead the audience into the character and be deeply attracted by the story of the film.
Although the pictures and shots of the film are not perfect, it can be seen that they are carefully done. As a commercial film in the traditional sense, this film does not have any audio-visual language such as breakout composition presented in the film, but some scenes in the film also have to be mentioned - when Macbeth meets the witch The ruins that appear are a wonderful scene: in the bleak rain and fog, and the wind is blowing, Maiban and the two pass by a ruined wall on the fertile grass, and behind the ruined black brick wall are several witches chanting heresy curses . The handling of rain and fog reflects the disturbing factors, while the ruins and blackness reflect the hideousness and heresy of the three witches. Such an environment plays a role in rendering the important prophecies later, and highlights those prophecies even more. of darkness and mystery.
There are countless highlights in the film, from the witch's prophecy at the beginning to Macbeth's assassination of the king under the guidance of a dagger.
One is the climax of the film - the second time Macbeth returns to the witch's lair. After becoming king and killing Banquo, Macbeth returned to the ruins to seek the help of the witches to learn his fate. A group of naked witches of various ages surround a cauldron in the basement, they make spooky laughter and recite mysterious evil spells, the atmosphere is restless and terrifying, surrounded by witches, Macbeth drinks He got the magic soup in the pot, and gradually fell into a hallucination. In the pot, he saw what was going to happen next, the prophecies of the witches. In the woods he saw the descendants of the office workers sitting on the throne wearing dazzling crowns and holding mirrors, and in the mirror Macbeth kept seeing the descendants of Banquo sitting on the throne wearing crowns, holding The mirror to reflect their descendants, until at last, Macbeth saw Banco who was murdered by him grinning at him with blood in his mouth, unable to contain the fear in his heart, he took the sword he wore in his dream and cut himself apart. 's dream. As the saying goes, there are thoughts in the day and dreams in the night. Macbeth’s dreams deeply reflect the lowest fear in his heart. There is a strong sense of uncertainty and insecurity in the surreal scene, and the strange lighting The overall soft light treatment of the dream and the whole highlight the sense of restlessness, like seeing the sitting king in the forest, and the passage in the mirror especially reflects this. The rapid switching of scenes increases the surprise and fear of the audience. Like experiencing what Macbeth heard and thought. This is the most exciting part of the film, and it is also the highlight of the film.
The second is the massacre of Malcolm's family - two soldiers entered the bedroom of Malcolm's wife and children who were chatting, and the atmosphere suddenly solidified. The two soldiers questioned the two about Malcolm. The tit-for-tat, to the soldier destroying his son's toy, heightened tension and fear. After that, the son ran into him because the soldiers insulted his father. Suddenly, the son stumbled back to his mother and said, "He killed me mama." He fell into his mother's arms. When the audience was surprised, the camera suddenly Turning around, it turned out that the child had been hit by a sword behind him and died. The mother was shocked by the sudden situation. There were screams outside the house. The mother, who broke free from the two soldiers, ran outside the bedroom and found that all the family members had been killed. Killed, fell into a pool of blood, the house was set on fire, and the raging fire was the medium for the transition of the film, and the whole paragraph ended here. In this passage, the appearance of the two soldiers broke the original peaceful and warm atmosphere, the rhythm turned sharply and dropped to freezing point, and the audience's heart was also suspended by this sudden change. He couldn't stop contradicting one of the soldiers, and then his death was dealt with wonderfully. With a scene change, the rhythm of the paragraph turned sharply, and the audience seemed to be shocked and unacceptable, as if following the mother. Change, the voice comes first, and the screams leave a lot of room for the audience to imagine, and once again increase the tension of the film, making the audience worry about the fate of the characters. It wasn't until the very end, with the bloody scene that the sun was breaking through the clouds, that the tension and fear reached their peak.
Of course, these wonderful scenes are inseparable from the superb acting skills of the actors. Macbeth played a sensitive, fragile and cruel and arrogant king vividly, and the performances of other characters are also very wonderful. It is because of their performances that this Only a film about human nature can be so expressive and full of power.
The music in the film does not appear too many times. It is based on the intersection of modern music and medieval music. The selection of music is actually based on the content of the specific sections of the film. Some are to set off a thrilling atmosphere, and some are It directly expresses the local customs at that time, and the roles vary, but at the same time, they all well reflect the director's wishes.
However, this film is not completely perfect. Although the film has a lot of classic scenes, the final duel between Macbeth and Macduff and others is obviously a bit ridiculous. I personally think that Polanski is dealing with The experience in action scenes is still slightly lacking. But even so, as a work of love and insight into human nature and destiny, the film's excellent artistic achievement is beyond reproach.
Polanski is known around the world for his films shot in small spaces, where he always brings the contradictions and dramas between characters to the extreme, such as Knife in the Water. In this film, however, he chose Shakespeare plays and costume plays that he did not operate, and greatly broadened the narrative environment, which was a huge challenge for him. But what is surprising is that this film did not disappoint. It was presented to the world with an extremely neat and high artistic level. Not only that, Polanski integrated his own understanding of the film, not only maintaining the film The completeness of Shakespeare's original works also deepens the meaning of darkness and fate expressed in Shakespeare's original works. It can be said that it is a model work of drama adaptation into film and television drama.
——Written in the early morning of October 14, 2014
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