View carefully the 3 clips of Macbeth’s death from the Polanski, Nunn and Wright versions.
(Note: the three preceding links open a very small 3 – 5mg version of each film. To access larger versions, log-on to a school computer and open the “Year 10 English” folder, open the “videos” sub-folder and open or download these three files: nunn_macbeths_death.mov, polanski_macbeths_death.mov, wright_macbeths_death.mov).
Compare/contrast the sequences in terms of the following criteria:
- Perspective – relating to character
- Knowing background circumstances
- Personality – essentially a good or bad person?
- Motives – reason for doing something
- How others influence the character?
- Language (“lexical chain” – groups of ideas) – the words the character says: words, how it is spoken (ambition, blood)
- Settings – dark/light, day/night, geographical & temporal choices, architecture, weather, use of space
- Structure – alterations to space (open and closed spaces, length of scenes), metaphor to camera angles, etc.
- Costumes – light/dark / colour, how they are worn, uniform,
- Actions –
- Characterisation – how the character is portrayed
- How the characters relate to each other – dynamics, time in scenes with with whom, how important to developing the plot
- Music and sound effects – harmony/disharmony,
- Props – realistic/representational
After you have analysed the sequences, rank each in terms of how heroic or how villainous Macbeth is. It might be useful to place them on a spectrum from hero at one end, to terrorist/villain at the other.