No, not because it's Shakespeare (Even though it's difficult to process immediately).
I was sitting in the theater and I had absolutely no clue what was being said. I simply just couldn't hear. It's hard enough that it's Shakespeare and the Scottish tongue. I just felt the mix of the dialogue and the annunciation were very poor.
Anybody else?
Were you ALONE?
Did you not ask anyone else near you in the theater. Was ANYONE else in the theater.
Perhaps you were the only one. If you read on through the threads you may well find out.
Play was written in English. Shaky did not know the gaelic language. For heathens no doubt.
Mind you perhaps someone should try and do it in Gaelic and lets see the audience figures for the 'bampots' who go to watch that.
We proper speaking British cannot understand much of heavy dialacted Scottish accents even now and there are campaigns for the retention of local dialects which are in reality just ways of WASTING taxpayers money. I will bet that in the civilized world we have small fortunes being paid out to teach children the language of their parents who have decided to migrate. What a nonsense. Do the Native Americans expect that facility. I doubt the Hebrew does. He is quite happy to pay for those additions to a life.
I will need to hear this movie. I see that earlier ones suffered from the lead not being too clearly spoken although this seems to be how the character should come across. Weak willed compared to his wife.
Was this the problem?
But do hope the visuals were enjoyable.
Willie did invents new words but in the US not only inventing new words but changing the spelling of the OLD world words also two nations separated by a common language. Eh!
I've seen more than 10 live productions of Macbeth and have a pretty big portion of the text nearly memorized.
I also had a hard time understanding certain portions of the dialogue in this film because there was hardly any inflection or articulation. It was pretty clear that the entire cast had been directed to "do nothing" in order to make the dialogue seem organic, but that's a problem when you're dealing with Shakespeare because there's nothing natural about the dialogue.
^^^ This answer is the best...
For a while I couldn't figure out what it was but you are right, they are going for a more organic dialogue.
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"I'll let you have your opinion if you let me have mine..."
I found it quite refreshing to be honest.
Sick and tired of the inflections and over the top annunciations that work in theater maybe where people in the back row need to hear you but don't quite make sense in film.
No you were not the only one. I think they should have had subtitles.
I used to think my dad was Elvis. I haven't told him that yet. I haven't told my dad either.
Jeez. You couldn't surmise what was going on due to the acting and visuals? I had no problem figuring out what was going on and I've never even so much as read MacBeth.
shareScottish accents are difficult to understand for most people. Having grown up watching a lot of U.K. TV series and films, I generally have no problem understanding most U.K. accents, and when travelling in Scotland I had no trouble understanding most Scots.
My friend who also saw this film with me is originally from Glasgow and we both agreed that some of the lines were difficult to hear properly - the annunciation was fine but the quality of the sound was poor/low. I do wonder if sound editors ever think about the audiences around the world watching/listening to scenes in theatres.
There are Scottish accents in this? I'm a born and bred Highlander, currently sitting less than half a mile from where the real MacBeth was born. The problem understanding people in this has nothing to do with Scottish accents, believe me.
Far an taine ‘n abhainn, ‘s ann as mò a fuaim.
Well, to understand why the language was hard - one has to understand the story of Macbeth.
1) Consider, a kingdom with K as the king, L as the heir to the throne.
2) M, a brave warrior of that kingdom, comes to know of two prophecies
- that M will get to be the king
- that his kids of his friend F will inherit the kingdom.
3) The prophecy causes Mr. and Mrs. M to become greedy. M kills K.
4) Now M is not only guilty and but also scared of F. Therefore, he turns against F.
5) M receives a third prophecy that no 'woman-born' will kill him.
6) The confident tyrant M now duels N. N was born through C-section. Loophole = N trumps M.
7) Game over.
Now how do you make such a banal story a pretentious classic? Employ such language that is not in use for several centuries. I bet that if the same movie uses 'common English' - it won't even hit 5/10 here at imdb. Modern script writers are much better than the ones from these bygone eras.
True. The plot is rubbish.
Shakespeare's plots are utter crap.
If you don't love that dialogue there really is nothing to see here.
It's not the accents, I'm scottish and still missed a lot of the dialogue.
The trouble is that because it's friggin Shakespeare, directors feel bound to the original work. If they had made the movie but without all the "feast us thrice on the throppely doppely" it would be much more accessible to the majority.
I have subtitles on but I still don't understand half of what the eff they're saying! It's like they're speaking english but they're not. Like black folks speaking ghetto... only they're white.
share