Roman Polanski’s 1971 Macbeth followed the darkest moment in the controversial director’s life — the savage 1969 murder of his wife, Sharon Tate, and their unborn child at the hands of Charles Manson and his followers. The Shakespearean play already brims with madness and violence, but Polanski’s acclaimed staging shocked audiences with its nudity and gore. In the end of the play and the film, Macbeth is confronted by Macduff, the Scottish noble whose wife and child Macbeth has brutally killed — an echo of Polanski’s own torment. Despite their shiny armor, there is nothing glorious about the duel. It’s clumsy, awkward and brutish, devolving at times into a childish wrestling match. In the end, Macbeth’s death seems almost an accident, a fatalistic comment, some have suggested, by Polanski on the dark absurdity of violence and those who live by it.