SOURCE: Rothwell, Kenneth S. “Shakespeare Goes Digital.” Cineaste 25, no. 3 (June 2000): 50-2.

In the following excerpted review of Trevor Nunn's 1979 production of Macbeth recorded on video, Rothwell praises the haunting performances of Ian McKellen as Macbeth and Judi Dench as Lady Macbeth, as well as Nunn's skilled direction.

The critically acclaimed Trevor Nunn Macbeth (1979), re-recorded on VHS for HBO, returns theater to primal ritual. Macbeth is Shakespeare's journey into the heart of darkness, which probes into the nether regions of the unconscious where shameful desires lie hidden like the damned frozen in ice at the center of Dante's Inferno. Macbeth (Ian McKellen) and his Lady (Judi Dench) wring the last drop of misery out of the nightmare human condition in which there is no hope but only remorse and eventual extinction (“Out, out brief candle! / Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player …”).

Nunn shatters all dogma about the...