What if the Macbeths were alive in 1975? Thats the question posed by Billy Morrissettes Scotland, PA, a revisionist adaptation of Shakespeares Macbeth. KPBS Film Critic Beth Accomando has this review.
Macbeth has been brought to the screen as an American gangster film, a Japanese feudal epic, a lesbian comedy and most recently as a 70s slacker tale about murder, ambition and fast food. The press kit for Billy Morrissettes Scotland, PA looks like a Cliff Notes guide and its hilariously appropriate packaging. Like that favorite student shortcut to great works of literature, Morrissettes film is light on Shakespeare and provides only a cursory introduction to the themes. But like Cliff Notes, it also makes the complex more accessible and Shakespeare less intimidating.
