Vee's+Macbeth+1st+Draft


 * __Macbeth 1st Draft__** : Compare and Contrast movie and original plays.

Macbeth was a tragic play written by one of the greatest British poet of all time, Shakespeare. The story of Macbeth was believed to be written around the year 1603 to 1607. It was the shortest play that Shakespeare ever wrote during the time when King James the first was in power. During that time, people who work on stage was lack of technology and knowledge to make a special effect. Therefore, actors plays a very important role to delivers the message and feeling to the audience. The speech tends to be much longer and complicated compare to the present day. The content of the story itself involve a lot of blood and violence, tragedy, and conflicts.

In my opinion, Macbeth is a very psychological and complex plays. For example when Lady Macbeth mention, "Out, damned spot! out, I say!--One: two: why, then, 'tis time to do't.--Hell is murky!--Fie, my lord, fie! a soldier, and afeard? What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our power to account?--Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him." This quote display her guilt and how dirty she feel about herself. It was quite surprising for me how Shakespeare could wrote something so complicated and abstract even in his time where psychology and understanding of human mind are rarely understandable to people.

There is a huge different between the remake version and the original version of Macbeth. The remake version is more understandable because of the special effect that people are incapable of doing back in Shakespeare time. Back then, the stage does not have many function to make special effect such as lighting, night time/ day time, blood, and so on. Actor have to describe, not only their feeling but also the surrounding and environment that they are in. Unlike today, where director can include many graphic and special effect into the movie. However, each version of Macbeth movies was different from one another as well.

The 1970 Macbeth movie version used the exact same speech from the original play. However, the movie was able to show something that a play can not such as characters emotion and the scene where Macbeth killed King Ducan. The first scene was also outstanding as well as how the movie display the wickedness of the three witches. This movie was able to make people with no knowledge of Macbeth understand such a complicated play while keeping the original message that the writer want to deliver. Although the movie was not entertaining it can be use for educational purpose and I believe this would be more effective to the students than to let them read the original texts.

The Japanese remake version of Macbeth was far different from the original play. Despite the fact that the story line was kept the same but the director had made many changed in the movie to suit the Japanese culture. One of the major different that can be spot is the change in Lady Macbeth's characteristic. She appear to be more respectful to her husband than the European version while her husband was shown to be very aggressive all the time. The ending was very unexpected when Macbeth's troops turn against him.

I think the 1970 version can best represent Macbeth and would be good for educational use. I personally like the Japanese version of Macbeth despite the fact that it was very long. I like the differences between culture and how the story telling are kind of different, as well as characters behavior.