It’s hard to imagine a darker tale than General Macbeth’s bloody descent into hell – he whose lust for power and all-consuming paranoia spawn regicides, betrayals and suicides.
The spirits of murdered rivals come to claim their due. The predictions of ghostly witches come true. The dead and their blood irrevocably stain the hands of the survivors. Ominous signs multiply. Macbeth is an account of terrible fatality, where ambition and brutality ooze from everywhere.
This world finds contemporary echoes in the biker wars of late 20th-century Quebec. Castles become countryside motels. Banquets are barbecues where picnic tables are covered with beer and hot dogs. People meet their demise drowned at the bottom of a lake, wearing cement boots, rather than at swordpoint. The Great Birnam Wood is transformed into a field of cannabis. And if you have to flee, it’s by motorcycle or rowboat rather than on horseback or three-masted ship.
One thing remains, however: Shakespeare’s remarkable lucidity as he examines the most primal of human impulses.
TOTAL : 155 min.