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."
Read more about this topic: Macbeth (1971 film)
Famous quotes containing the word reception:
“I gave a speech in Omaha. After the speech I went to a reception elsewhere in town. A sweet old lady came up to me, put her gloved hand in mine, and said, “I hear you spoke here tonight.” “Oh, it was nothing,” I replied modestly. “Yes,” the little old lady nodded, “that’s what I heard.””
—Gerald R. Ford (b. 1913)
“Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody’s face but their own; which is the chief reason for that kind of reception it meets in the world, and that so very few are offended with it.”
—Jonathan Swift (1667–1745)
“Aesthetic emotion puts man in a state favorable to the reception of erotic emotion.... Art is the accomplice of love. Take love away and there is no longer art.”
—Rémy De Gourmont (1858–1915)