Reception
Upon release in October 1971, Macbeth received mixed critical reviews. Some found the film's graphic violence and nudity distracting, complaining that such blatancy and literalness diminished the complexity and ambiguity of the original text. Moreover, the single-minded bleakness and unrelenting brutality of Polanski's vision was faulted by less sympathetic commentators as being a crude and monotonous oversimplification of the play which, in Pauline Kael's view, ultimately "reduces Shakespeare's meanings to the banal theme of 'life is a jungle'".
Many were particularly disturbed by the lurid manner in which Polanski depicted the bloody slaughter of Macduff's wife and children. Kael went so far as to say that Polanski seemed to stage the scene as a deliberate evocation of the Manson Murders.
Other critics, however, praised the film for its technical excellence, vivid atmosphere, fluid cinematic narrative and compelling modernistic interpretation of Shakespeare's tragedy. Roger Ebert (film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times) gave it 4 out of 4 stars saying that "It's an original film by an original film artist, and not an interpretation". The U.S. National Board of Review named Macbeth the Best Film of 1971.
The film was screened at the 1972 Cannes Film Festival, but wasn't entered into the main competition.
The film currently holds an 83% 'Fresh' rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with the consensus "Roman Polanski's Macbeth is unsettling and uneven, but also undeniably compelling."
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