Theme Of Violence In Macbeth

We first meet ShakespeaRE-Told’s head chef, Joe Macbeth, at a stainless steel countertop, where he tenderly carves a pig’s head, each stroke laden with care. “First rule in a kitchen: respect. See this animal? This animal was noble, highly intelligent, feeling… Never forget that.” Meanwhile, in Kurzel’s Macbeth, a flourish of slashing swords presents the film’s hardened protagonist, Macbeth, who stains the verdant battlefield red with each slow-motion-slitting of a throat. The violence he inflicts is by no means painless – and his victims are men, not animals.

Herein lies the root of the two films’ diverse approaches to violence. While the lives of a chef and a warrior are both punctuated with blood, they are far from the same – a truth that

For Joe, this violence is wholly unnatural; its methods are entirely wrong. He has trained himself “never to kill an animal in distress,” yet has now savagely broken that rule in one swift motion. As he repeats to Ella in anguish immediately after having committed the murder, “He thought I was going to help him. He thought I could help him. He thought I was going to help him.” Joe had never before killed a man; he had only butchered animals (and mercifully, at that). But Duncan was no animal – and there was no mercy shown in such a bloody murder. And so, when guilt comes flooding in, it leaves Joe floundering in its wake.

For the ruthless warrior of Kurzel’s production, however, such grisly carnage need not carry any emotional baggage. Macbeth has slit dozens of throats; his past drips with crimson. Thus, when he enters Duncan’s sleeping quarters, Macbeth is able to temporarily detach himself from the weight of reality – as though he is simply charging an enemy from the battlefield’s frontline. The camera does not pan away from this most gruesome murder. Instead, it zooms in on Macbeth as he savagely slaughters his king. Joe’s murder of Duncan, meanwhile, is a horror left