Macbeth Compare and Contrast Essay Example

Grief is an inevitable aspect of human life that everyone goes through differently. I understood this in grade six when my school counsellor walked into my classroom with pain and tears in her eyes. After getting our attention, with the raise of her hand, she said, “I’m so sorry but, Amanda’s sister died in a car accident last night.” At that moment, my classmates and I were all shocked. However, what differed between us was how everyone coped with the news differently. For example, many students started crying, others laughed, and some became entirely silent. Comparatively, in both the traditional and modern film of Macbeth, Lady Macbeth copes with her guilt differently. 

In the traditional version of Macbeth, Marion Cotillard, playing Lady Macbeth, does a phenomenal job of using emotions in her acting. One instance of this is how she copes with her guilt after realizing she encouraged Macbeth to kill Duncan and helped him do so. When she finds herself guilty of murder, she begins conveying feelings of sadness and distress. While displaying these emotions, she begs for mercy while crying and repeating the phrase, “what’s done cannot be undone.” The significance of this phrase is a way for Lady Macbeth to move forward from her past. Saying this phrase is a sort of reassurance that what she has done in the past is irreversible; therefore, she should simply move on. 

In the modern version of Macbeth, with Kate Fleetwood, many aspects of emotion are missing from the film. Kate Fleetwood displays symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), such as reoccurring nightmares and hallucinations. For example, in one scene, Kate is seen sleepwalking to the sink yelling, “what's done cannot be undone,” while trying to wash the ‘blood’ off of her hands. The significance of washing her hands is to display emotions of guilt and regret and, the action of washing her hands is her attempt to rid herself of the blame to escape her wrongdoings. 

A common theme that can be, identified in both films is the significant amount of guilt that the character, Lady Macbeth, endures. Throughout both films, Lady Macbeth is seen enduring, the pain and guilt of killing King Duncan, however, the most substantial difference is how the character, in each film, deals with the tragedy. The coping mechanism that is, utilized by each character playing the role of Lady Macbeth is drastically different from one another. Lady Macbeth’s motivation for committing such a dark crime was so she could eventually become the queen. Tragically, her guilt overcame her, and she could not live with herself and her actions, and thus she took her own life.

It is evident that Lady Macbeth coped with her guilt much differently as in one, she conveyed her emotions awake, whereas, in the other, she conveyed her emotions through sleepwalking. Such differences in coping led to two different productions with one having emotions conveyed stronger and the other not. The guilt of her actions caused Lady Macbeth to take her own life to escape her reality. In life, we are often faced with critical life-changing decisions, however, the moral of this movie was to illustrate how guilt and grief can truly, affect someone and that power will never outweigh guilt. Both the traditional and modern film of Macbeth portray different coping mechanisms to deal with the guilt and grief however, ultimately, the outcome, was proven to be the same.