SOURCE: Robinson, Randal. “Reversals in Polanski's Macbeth.” Literature/Film Quarterly 22, no. 2 (1994): 105-08.

In the following essay, Robinson notes how Polanski's adaptation of Macbeth highlights several central themes in Shakespeare's text, noting Polanski's effective use of cinematic techniques to emphasize the play's thematic oppositions.

Pigs and chickens eat in the courtyard; later, servants carry four of the chickens and one of the pigs away—the chickens upside down—to become food in a noble feast. Music plays, and Lady Macbeth, dressed in blue, moves through her courtyard in the free morning light, reading her husband's letter; later, that music returns, and Lady Macbeth stands behind an imprisoning grating, an exhausted woman in impure white, reading again her husband's letter. The Thane of Cawdor swiftly ascends the tower stairs: having gone up, he leaps to his death. Duncan rides wearily to Macbeth's castle as a king on horseback: he returns...