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Title: Appeals to a more youthful audience
Review: I am an English teacher, and I have always found Macbeth a tough sell with high school students. This modern take on the classic is the only film version available that appeals to a younger generation, and it uses the original text fairly effectively (albeit with many cuts). Think of this as the Macbeth equivalent of Baz Luhrmann's Romeo and Juliet, but without Luhrmann's visual sense of humor.Yes, this Macbeth has its drawbacks, namely gratuitous nudity and an inexplicable orgy with Macbeth and the witches (I skip over these parts with my students). Overall, though, this film captures the violence of the play in a more contemporary context and, through visual cues, actually provides plausible motivations for the characters (e.g. Lady Macbeth is a suicidal drug user after the death of a son). Worth a look, but not for purists.
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