Tragedy of Macbeth, The | Blu-ray

As much as it pains me to say it, Roman Polanski teamed up with Playboy to make the definitive cinematic version of Macbeth. As much as I love Shakespeare and as deservedly famous as this play is, "The Scottish Play" has regularly struggled in its adaptation to the screen. Directors often seem to want to take an expressionist approach to the work, bringing its horror to the forefront through austere framing and jarring aesthetics.

By both giving the play an intensely naturalistic setting (filmed in and around a number of remote medieval castles in the UK), and giving Macbeth's treachery brutal and violent realism, so much of the work's heavy emotional scenes and monologues become much more vibrant and grounded in the real.

Dialogue is spoken with conversational affect, costumes and set dressing all feel attentive to the history it's meant to portray. A strong cast operating firmly on the same page throughout avoids the all too often feeling from a Shakespeare production that everyone brought their own style to the set. All told, it's an exceptionally well produced and set version of one of history's great literary works.