Film

Macbeth

Name: Macbeth
Genre: War, Drama
Released: 1971
Cast: Jon Finch, Francesca Annis, Martin Shaw, John Stride, Nicholas Selby

Polanski's is the coldest, bloodiest Macbeth ever filmed — shot straight after the Manson murders took his own wife, and the grief bleeds into every frame. Jon Finch and Francesca Annis play the couple as frighteningly young, in over their heads from the first scene. The violence is unflinching, the Scottish light grey and merciless. Not comfortable. Genuinely frightening.

TMDb rating

7.1

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Polanski's very next film, and just as cold-eyed about power and rot, but he trades castles and swords for sun-bleached Los Angeles and a mystery that curdles slowly instead of exploding in blood.

But No witches, no battles — this is a talky, patient noir, and the horror is entirely human-scale.

Ran1985

Kurosawa doing Shakespearean tragedy on the grandest possible canvas — feuding sons, a collapsing kingdom, battle sequences so vast and beautiful they feel operatic. Same tragic engine, different bard, different continent.

But It's King Lear, not Macbeth, and it's nearly three hours of subtitled, deliberately paced grief.

Macbeth2015

Fassbender and Cotillard play the couple as shell-shocked soldiers rather than schemers, filmed in the same mud and mist Polanski loved. Watching the two side by side is its own kind of education.

But Same story so soon after Polanski's version might feel like doubling up rather than discovering something new.

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Throne of Blood1957

A direct transposition of the same plot into a wholly different culture and visual language, proving the story's engine survives translation entirely.

Kurosawa's Macbeth, transplanted whole into feudal Japan — the same witch, the same prophecy, the same wife pushing her husband toward the throne, staged with Noh theatre precision and a final image nobody forgets.

But Subtitled, deliberately stylised 1950s Japanese cinema — a real shift in register if you came only for Shakespeare's English.

The Tragedy of Macbeth2021

The Coen brothers' answer is the total opposite move — stark black-and-white soundstage theatricality instead of grime, with Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand delivering the verse like a knife.

But Deliberately cold and stagey where Polanski is visceral; if you wanted mud and blood, this is all shadow and geometry.

The Lion in Winter1968

Same medieval rot, same marriage as battlefield — a king and queen tearing each other and their sons apart over succession, with dialogue sharp enough to draw blood without a single sword swing.

But No supernatural element and no war — this is verbal combat in castle rooms, not armies in the mud.

There Will Be Blood2007

Watch ambition curdle into paranoia and isolation all over again, just relocated to the California oil fields. Same slow moral collapse, same sense that getting what you wanted destroys you.

But No royal trappings or prophecy — this is American capitalism as the tragic engine instead of witches.

Rosemary's Baby1968

Polanski again, and again a marriage that becomes a trap — dread built slowly out of prophecy, complicity, and a spouse you can no longer fully trust.

But It's horror in a Manhattan apartment, not war in a castle — much smaller, much more claustrophobic.

Game of Thrones2011

If you wanted the scale of ambition, prophecy, and blood-soaked crowns stretched across years rather than compressed into two hours, this is the modern, sprawling descendant.

But Eight seasons is a real commitment, and the tone swings much wider — this isn't nearly as disciplined or tight.

A Simple Plan1998

No crowns, no witches — just ordinary people whose one bad decision spirals into guilt, suspicion, and murder, in eerily plausible small-town Minnesota. Quietly devastating.

But Entirely stripped of Shakespeare's poetry and grandeur — this is Macbeth's engine with none of its music.

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Beat-for-beat the same tragedy, but proving it can survive a total tonal inversion into farce without losing its shape.

The exact same plot — murder the boss, seize the throne, unravel with guilt — restaged as a deadpan black comedy in a 1970s small-town diner, with hippie fortune tellers standing in for the witches.

But It's a comedy, and deliberately silly with it — if you want Shakespeare's gravity, this pointedly refuses to give it to you.

House of Cards1990

A structural remake in modern dress: same marriage, same ambition, same moral rot, told through parliamentary intrigue instead of witches and war.

Francis Urquhart is Macbeth in a Westminster suit — an ambitious politician goaded partly by his wife, murdering his way to the top, and breaking the fourth wall instead of speaking soliloquies to the dark.

But No swords, no battlefield, no supernatural machinery — just committee rooms and knives in the back, British political drama style.