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Polanski's Macbeth and Brook's King Lear project very different images of violence, but each film stylizes violence in a way that reflects its director's personal interpretation of the human condition he finds in Shakespeare's plays. Polanski's film revels in physical violence. Murder, disfigurement, and dismemberment are presented with scrupulous attention to detail. This pattern is established in the opening scene: as Polanski's gnarled and mutilated witches recite their opening lines, they drop a severed hand into a ditch along with a vial of blood, a hangman's noose, and other morbid charms. On this spot the opening battle takes place. Battle-axes, knives, spears, swords, and maces sever, puncture, crush, crunch, and crack. Every death scene-from the stabbing of Duncan, through the slaughtering of Macduff's family, to the final beheading of Macbeth-is presented with brutal, unwincing clarity.
Polanski's use of violence certainly makes unmistakable and palpable the full horror of Macbeth's deeds. Yet, the physical violence draws too much attention to itself. Polanski's most powerful sequences, such as the stabbing of Duncan, Banquo's ghost, the killing of Macduff's family, and the beheading of Macbeth, have the effect of distracting from the play's psychological conflicts. At least one of Polanski's cinematic symbols indicates that this may have been his intention. In the first scene portraying Macbeth as king, Macbeth is feasting while large dogs bait a chained bear. Macbeth then steps into an adjoining room to discuss plans to murder Banque During this discussion, the bloody carcasses of the bear and dogs are dragged before our eyes. This brutal scene not only counterpoints the violence in the human sphere; it also projects Polanski's view that a king's fate, like that of the chained bear, is to be attacked and ultimately destroyed by bloodthirsty underlings. The bear represents King Duncan brought down by Macbeth, who will be brought down by the forces of Malcolm, who in his turn (Polanski suggests in the film's closing frames) will be brought down by Donalbain. Polanski suggests here a continuous, unending cycle of violence rooted in humanity's primal, beast-like concern with power, territory, and security.
The bear-baiting scene, stunning as it is, achieves its effect by both begging...