"Boring Macbeth" Should Be an Oxymoron

I've put off writing this post because I knew it would be no fun to write.  Roman Polanski's Macbeth was a big let down.  It's boring.  The scenery was boring, the acting was boring, even Lady Macbeth was boring.  Even her "famous nude sleepwalking scene", as touted on the Netflix slipcase and elsewhere, was about as shocking or moving as it was exposing (that is, hardly at all).  On the other hand, you get an eye full of old naked witches huddled in a basement as if it were an alternate ending to The Blair Witch Project.  Gross.  To be fair, I may have missed the really good parts since I couldn't help dozing off here and there.  But I doubt it.  So, hopefully it's on to better things with Twelfth Night.  I'm excited about this one because the St. Louis Shakespeare Festival is performing Twelfth Night this year.  (On a side note, "twelfth" is about the weirdest word in the English language if you repeat it a few times.)

Shakespeare Movies: Throne of Blood

Akira Kurosawa's Throne of Blood is a clever, deliberately paced, and broodingly shot adaptation of Macbeth set in feudal Japan.  The plot is quite true to the play, and where it deviates it does so creatively.  It's only fair to admit that I'm not a fan of this sort of movie.  I've tried watching Kurosawa's masterpiece, Seven Samurai, and was too bored to get through it.  For anyone familiar with the Macbeth story, however, Throne of Blood is entertaining enough, even in it's dull moments.  For example, when Washizu and Miki (the Macbeth and Banquo characters, respectively) ride their horses back and forth through the fog for what seems like an eternity, just to show us how lost they are, you've got to laugh.
While music abounds in a number of Shakespeare plays, it's absent from his Macbeth.  In Kurosawa's version, though, songs contribute effectively.  Some of the events are moved around a bit, and it works.  The hand-washing scene takes place only after the enemy troops have begun to approach the castle, for instance.  "Lady Macbeth" not only manages to retain her sanity a bit longer, but is much more logical throughout.  Instead of attacking her husband's manhood to move him to regicide, she builds a logical argument based on the fear that Miki will betray the prophecy to the Great Lord (the King Duncan character).  More examples are present, but I won't give them all away.
The ending is also quite different, and I'm not going to give that away, either, because it's really the big payoff.  If you're going to watch the film, you'll want to that to be a surprise.  Overall, it's a satisfying take on Macbeth.  Some of the introspective monologues are lacking, replaced by moody scenery and visual symbols that are not as effective, but are interesting in themselves.  Evil Spirit, Kurosawa's version of the witches, was my favorite part.  Now, I'm looking forward to jumping ahead in time and seeing another version of Macbeth.