Macbeth

Excellent performance. There still are good actors around! Also great directing and photography. Very true to Shakespear, and a 'must' for all Shakespear fans. Macbeth (Jason Connery) moved me to tears with his final monolog (out brief candle, out)He gave the sphere of moral decay and dark forces a human face, which makes it the more interesting. Helen Baxendale is a very credible lady Macbeth who can be very cheerfull at times and sometimes she just looks like a naughty girl, but deadly in her taste for blood and evil. If you love death and decay, and Shakespears lyrics... this is the one.

This low budget production of Macbeth brought the play back to life again and is by far the best version I have watched. Jason Connery and Helen Baxendale are superb in their roles and bring a humanity to their characters that makes you feel with them. There is solid support, in particular from Graham McTavish, Iain Stuart Robertson, Kenneth Bryans and Jock Ferguson is brilliant as the porter. Jeremy Freeman makes a good job of his directorial debut, and should go far. This film is well worth watching.

Fresh, luminous Helen Baxendale and the magnetic Jason Connery, a slightly more subdued, less craggily Celtic version of his famous dad, make a sexy pair of doomed partners in this low-budget Scottish production. Many ingenious touches, and some scenes, especially those leading up to the murder, among the most compelling versions of the play I have ever seen. A worthy successor to Orson Welles' cheeseparing lensing for Republic Pictures. Good stuff.

In terms of look and feel this is faithful to the period and Jason Connery and Helen Baxendale are excellent as the Macbeths, with the supporting cast in fine form. The film suffers from poor production values, cheesy music and some dialogue editing that is strange. However, and on balance, this is a good version of the Scottish play, and well worth a viewing. It compares favourably with most other versions and I await he new Fassbender version with trepidation, as the trailer shows totally inappropriate backgrounds. This Jason Connery version is a film interpretation of the play rather than a a film of the play as performed on the stage so allowances have to be made. The use of the Scottish accent is authentic and the costumes seem as accurate as they can be. Baxendales interpretation of Lady Macbeth is excellent, and Jason Connery makes a good fist of a difficult role.

Every review I have read so far seems to have missed a crucial point. Shakespeare wrote for the accent and the pronunciation just as he did for northerners in other plays. The Scottish accent changes the emphasis and rhythm of the language and affects profoundly what is said and the way it is taken. So, listen again and note the difference. The play is well done and the rhythm of the words are so much better than that provided by people using received, polite, well- enunciated English. I am reminded of the time a teacher in a school in Leicester, unknowingly, asked me, age 14, to read a piece of Walter Scott which was written in the tone of the Border. I come from the Border and when I read it as it should be read it made all the difference.