Film Adaptation of The Tragedy of Macbeth

Scotland PA: Shakespeare Reimagined

Billy Morrissette’s 2001 Scotland PA is a dark comedy adaptation of Shakespeare’s Tragedy of Macbeth. The film is set in small town USA in the 1970s; instead of a castle, the main stage is a diner; instead of a warrior as in the original, Joe “Mac” McBeth is an employee of the diner’s owner. Instead of an heir to the throne, McDuff is a detective working the case as it develops. Instead of witches, the prophets of the film are two comedic stoners and their fortune-telling girlfriend. The film succeeds with these script changes because it grounds the action in comedy, with wry humorous lines given to the characters as they try to navigate the action of the plot. Because it is a dark comedy, the themes of murder and insanity are treated with some levity, and the resolution comes off more as just and happy than as tragic: Mac’s treachery is discovered, and McDuff comes into possession of the diner and fulfills his secret dream of breaking into the diner business. Outside the basic outline of plot points, the film is much different from the original play in just about every way imaginable—yet the adaptation works because it has fun with the changes and does not insist upon using the source material for anything more than basic plotting purposes.

The original version of The Tragedy of Macbeth is conceived and executed as a tragic drama. The hero of the play is Macbeth: his tragic fall is a result of his pride and ambition; spurred on by his scheming wife, he kills the king and claims the crown for himself. The power grab does not allow him any rest, however; he feels threatened on all sides and goes on a killing spree that culminates in a battle for the throne, at which point he is decapitated—but not before realizing that his plunge into nihilism and blood was precipitated by a foolish belief in the prophecies of the three deceiving witches.

The contemporary adaptation has none of the tragic vision of the original. The film plays the plot for laughs, turning the witches into buffoonish stoners; turning Banquo into a slow but not as dim-witted as he looks clerk at the diner; turning Macduff into a loveable old-school detective, whose appearance and demeanor are starkly out of keeping with the hippie-ish aspect of the rest of the assorted characters. The film replaces the poetic dialogue of the original with contemporary vernacular dialogue and action used for humorous purposes. The only ways in which the film really bears any resemblance to the original is in the use of names and in the use of the basic plot outline. But it does play on some of the words from the original.

For instance, the film opens with a cinematic touch, giving a long shot of a fair as the lights are shut off; the fair is over—but in one of the rides sits the two stoners and their girlfriend. They drop a bucket of chicken as they riff on “foul” and “fair,” with one saying, “The fair was fair,” and another saying, “The fair was foul,” and a third summarizing the comedic mood of the film with the words, “My ass hurts,” while the others giggle (Morrissette). This opening immediately lets the viewer know what kind of adaptation of Macbeth this film will be. For a modern day audience whose only sense of Shakespeare is likely to be the arbitrary semester in high school or college spent quickly going through some of the Bard’s plays, the comedic mood of the film is likely to be welcomed. The stoner “witches” are likely to be more relevant to a modern contemporary audience and their humor is the kind of low-brow humor typically found in contemporary comedies.

The original play is much more dramatic and soul-searching, however. For instance, it opens with the witches planning their next rendezvous to ensnare the hero Macbeth, who is at that moment with Banquo wandering home from the battlefield. The witches declare: “Fair is foul, and foul is fair” and these words are later echoed by Macbeth who says to Banquo, “So foul and fair a day I have not seen,” which are his very first words in the play (Shakespeare). The original play heightens the tension between what is right and what is wrong by highlighting these dramatic themes at the outset.

This sense of dramatic tension is lost in the film adaptation by Morrissette. The fact that the fate of Macbeth’s soul is at stake and has been targeted by the witches is never felt in the adaptation like it is in the original play. There is nothing sinister about the stoners and their girlfriend in the film, and therefore the entire stoner/girlfriend framing device feels like more of an arbitrary addition to link the film to the play than something that is relevant to the film. Yet, in the original, the witches are important to the plot, because it is their seduction of Macbeth through the tempting of his ambition that sucks him into the dark side. The film’s opening tone rejects the seriousness of the drama and therefore adopts an unconvincing footing. It recovers once the other characters are introduced, but McBeth in the film is never really introduced as a heroic character of significant stature. He comes across more as a down on his luck, befuddled character, who has a flash of valor. It is fun to watch Detective McDuff attempt to solve the case, which is why the film works as a dark comedy—but the dark side of the comedy never really feels to be as dark as the original source material—and the silliness of the stoners who give McBeth a sense of what might be in store in his future is part of the reason for this failure.

A tragedy is defined by Aristotle as something that is about a great man, who is good, who suffers a fall, and who comes to some self-knowledge through the unhappiness of his fall (Johnson and Arp). Aristotle believed that Oedipus Rex was a perfect tragedy and held it up as an example of how a tragedy should be developed. Shakespeare’s tragedies generally follow the form suggested by Aristotle: the heroes of the tragedies are great men, who are good, but who are brought low by some flaw and come to self-awareness through the course of their fall. This is true from Hamlet to King Lear to Othello and for Macbeth as well. Macbeth realizes too late that he was tricked by the witches—but in the original he believes he is so “in blood / Stepp'd in so far that, should I wade no more, / Returning were as tedious as go o'er” (Shakespeare). This is language appropriate for a tragedy, according to Johnson and Arp. However, this type of language is not used in the film adaptation. It is more focused on showing human weaknesses and the foibles of the common herd, which, according to Aristotle is what defines a comedy. Thus, the film adaptation is more comedic in orientation, and this is evident from the outset. The match-up of a tragic plot with a comedic approach is what makes the film more of a dark comedy, but the darkness is never really felt because the menacing power of the witches is missing, replaced by two stoners and their girlfriend, who seem to have no real ill-will towards McBeth whatsoever. In fact, they do not even know who he is when they meet him: “Your name is Mac?” they say after he asks them how they knew his name. The joke is that they were simply calling him “Mac” like one uses the term generically in everyday conversation. This change in the script robs the “witches” of the power that they have in the original and makes their presence in the film seem less relevant.

The film does have some theatrical elements—such as the costumes of the characters, which squarely set the time of the film in the 1970s. The characters have shaggy haircuts and flamboyant clothing. The setting of the film against the backdrop of a diner also gives it a theatrical touch. Music is used in a theatrical way to give a sense of the drama underlying the comedic script: Morrissette relies on Bachman Turner Overdrive to give a sense of the tension in the plot. He also uses Beethoven to set the stage for McBeth’s “heroic” dealing with unruly customers in the packed diner after the football game: McBeth leaps over the counter where he is cooking and uses his muscles to pick up the two food fighters and kick them out of the diner, all as the Beethoven swells in the background and the action is put into slow-motion. The diners applaud McBeth—and this is meant to show that he is a good guy—but the action is comedic more than it is dramatic, even though Morrissette combines theatrical elements (music and funny costumes) with cinematic effects (slow motion and a low angle shot of McBeth leaping the counter into action). Overall, however, the dialogue and actions of the characters are not very theatrical when compared to the original play: they are more cinematic in that they are used to help start and end scenes. For instance, when McDuff is seen being hugged outside the restaurant, the other characters hug him after their interviews in the diner, which gives the sequence a funny, cinematic character.

Framing is also used in the film to move the plot along. For instance, when Banko begins to suspect that Mac has changed, Morrissette places Banko in the food service truck and Mac outside it, looking dazed. Banko tries to communicate to Mac through the window of the truck, and moves slowly when he finally gets a response from Mac, indicating that the two are no longer as close as they once were. Another instance of this is in the opening of the film, when the stoners and their girlfriend move in and out of frame on the Ferris wheel, as they reference the original play’s famous “fair is foul” line. Then the film cuts to old TV footage of a 70s cop show in black and white while opening credits appear on the screen; this is followed by a cut to Duncan’s diner (long shot) in black and white. Color slowly fades into the long shot, and the film cuts to the interior of the diner with a close-up of a customer’s unfinished food on a table. A waitress appears to clean the table and consumes what was left unfinished by the customer, reinforcing the comedic overtones of the film vs. the dramatic and tragic story of the original play.