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Day Three Hundred and Three:  Mickey B

I haven’t talked much about my independent study despite how much I love it right now because I am going to be developing a project for next term around it, but I just watched a film and I need to talk about it.  The thing about Macbeth by William Shakespeare is that there are some obviously identifiable themes that we can all point out immediately:  desire, greed, ambition, persuasion, witchcraft, guilt, revenge, and probably more but off the top of my head those are what we’ve got to work with.  Now, the film I just watched was called Mickey B and it was set in a maximum security prison in Belfast, and the cast were, as I have come to believe (and unless my research is wrong) were a group of “lifers” themselves.  The film-makers set this version of Macbeth around gangs inside the prison system, and for the most part this works.

Until the guilt sets in.

The thing about Mickey B is that we enter the story after these men have been put in prison, so we have no idea how or why they were sentenced to a long stay if not life in jail, and this brings me to the conclusion as to why Mickey B himself (the Macbeth character) feels guilt.  Silly question?  Is it?  Men who are sent to prison for killing people to begin with are the kind of men who do not feel guilty for their previous sins, are they not?  Is it because Mickey feels guilt towards his former leader (Duncan?) and that now he is not a loyal gang member?  In all due respect to the actors, film makers, and the adaptation it just didn’t come off as reasonable or transferable.

Everything else about it worked.  I mean, the change in power and following, the loyalty, the gluidity of “Oh Duncan’s dead okay, his son’s off appealing his death, so Mickey is in charge cool okay,” and the fact that no one starts questioning all of these deaths or putting them together is nothing new as it happens in Shakespeare’s edition as well.  What bothered me was that we didn’t see enough of the faithful relationships to really understand why Macbeth felt guilty.

Maybe guilt is just one of those human emotions that really is inexplainable.  Why does anyone feel guilt anyway?  Is there a point to it?  Can it be provoked systematically?  Or is guilt just something that happens and we search for the answers as to why we feel this way?  I love that this is what I’ve focused on and what I got out of this adaptation.  The most amazing part about this project is that I learn something new from each adaptation. 

Mark’s gonna be so proud!

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