Slightly OT: The Tragedy of Macbeth


Some one I follow on Twitter was just gobsmacked by this play on AppleTV, which stars the great Denzel Washington as Macbeth.

I tried watching it and found one problem, the sound, and another, the acting.  The former allows me to talk about it here. :)

I found the voice often mumbled and too hard to hear.  In terms of the acting, and diction, the line delivery was on a metronome, and I wondered if the actors knew the words they were using or rushing through them.

Can any fans of the bard help me get more into this production? 

erik_squires

An increase in laminar flow the opposite of a box of foam. Laminar tubes capture air flow at one end and direct that air out the other overcoming boundary interference.. and will help to unravel words hidden in a box sitting on a shelf. You are smart, drop the software and look around and be creative. Tom

I didn’t have any issues hearing the dialog. Perhaps due to my center channel being concentric? (Elac Adante)  I believe the actors were speaking in iambic pentameter. What was interesting was the choice of aspect ratio.
We didn’t finish the movie, but may return to it.

 

I read an article a few months ago that asked if you are having a problem hearing movie dialog? But not so much "hearing" it as being able to distinguish the words. Apparently it has a lot to do with the sound production at the time the movie is made. This is a pervasive problem and there is not much we can do about it. If you saw saliva emitting from the actors mouths then you know they are using proper volume and diction with the Bard’s work.

Judging by the trailers, the principal emphasis is on the moody B&W look and other atmospheric film noir details, of which the sotto voce dialogue would be a part.

For contrast, try Kenneth Branagh's filmed version of a stage performance of Macbeth, from 2013.

Even better, for the ultimate Shakespeare movie experience, try Branagh's Henry V. Be sure to play it through a quality audio system or home theatre, as it has an excellent originally composed score that runs throughout.

It also bears saying that some actors train for half a lifetime to perform Shakespeare, so being a successful screen actor isn't a guarantee of equally successful "crossover" success.

 

Judging by the trailers, the principal emphasis is on the moody B&W look and other atmospheric film noir details, of which the sotto voce dialogue would be a part.

 

Yeah, it is very film noir. And I can see that Branaugh's is going to be a radically different take (I've seen Henry V) .

Was it tough to decode the movie Belfast as well or Net Flix series Peeky Blinders?.Both of those took awhile to decipher and finnaly understand. Peeky we watched with subtitles on for at least 20 minutes so our brains could adapt to the accent. Tom

Saw it in a theater a few months ago.  Did notice I was understanding much more of the dialogue by the end of the film, which suggests my brain was adapting to the old English.

See, I actually love Shakespeare and iambic pentameter.  This movie, to my mind relies too much on mood and not enough on acting.  Am I dead inside?

I saw "Belfast" in a theater. I wondered if I 

would have trouble understanding the Irish English

and not surprisingly that was the case. Most frustrating.

I'm of the mind that subtitles should be included

under these circumstances.

i

Akira Kurosawa's "Throne Of Blood" is an outstanding adaptation of the Scottish play.