Review/Opinion

'The Tragedy of Macbeth'

Lord Banquo, the Thane of Lochaber, (Bertie Carvel), Crown Prince Malcolm (Harry Melling) and King Duncan (Brendan Gleeson) await the arrival of the conquering hero and new Thane of Cawdor in Joel Coen’s “The Tragedy of Macbeth.”
Lord Banquo, the Thane of Lochaber, (Bertie Carvel), Crown Prince Malcolm (Harry Melling) and King Duncan (Brendan Gleeson) await the arrival of the conquering hero and new Thane of Cawdor in Joel Coen’s “The Tragedy of Macbeth.”

For a variety of reasons, I ended up screening Joel Coen's first solo effort, sans his brother and longtime partner, Ethan, over the course of a fitful night of sleep. Not ideal for most movies, but a surprisingly effective one for a film -- and play -- based so much on the human subconscious.

Coen's adaptation of one of Shakespeare's most dark and macabre works is steeped in acute visual gloss -- shot in beseechingly beautiful black and white by cinematographer Bruno Delbonnel -- all swirling mists, dark contrasts, and the flapping wings of angry ravens. It is hauntingly beautiful, indeed, with sensuous constructions -- a droplet of water falling a great height onto a leaf; a lone figure in the mists on the precipice of a perfectly etched cliff edge -- but only to help depict the madness of our soul, driven by power-lust and egomania, when we bathe in our basest natures.

Whereas most directors making a stage adaptation seek to expand the setting beyond the forced contrivances of a theater, Coen has instead embraced the curious artificiality of the form. The setting of Macbeth's castle is a construction of angles, shadows, and empty rooms save for the barest furniture. Rather as David Lowery visually depicted the setting of an ancient poem in "The Green Knight," the characters all reside in a maze of confusion, high ceilings or none at all. Often the rooms are open to the heavens, whose condemnation rains down upon the heads of both Macbeth (Denzel Washington), the now-tyrant king, whose murder of the previous crown-bearer (Brendan Gleeson) brought him such power, and madness; and the Lady Macbeth (Frances McDormand), who first entreated, then implored her husband to take such a violent act in the first place.

Like similarly haunted and deeply paranoid leaders before (and well after) him, Macbeth continues to hold power by cruelly dispatching any who might stand in his way, along with their families, including the tragic Macduff (Corey Hawkins), whose wife and children are so slaughtered by the cunning Ross (Alex Hassell), ever keeping those in power in his grace.

It is by the enraged Macduff's hand that the tyrant king eventually falls, but it is by men like Ross, and the soothsaying witches (an unforgettable Kathryn Hunter) who meet with Macbeth as a younger general and suggest to him the possibilities of his power yet to come, who actually set the pieces in motion, and chart the course of the chaos that follows.

Washington and McDormand are brilliant, as are the rest of the cast, handling the daunting task of taking such well-worn lines ("Out, damned spot!" "By the pricking in my thumbs ...") and restoring them once again as part of a whole from their cultural vernacular. It's challenging in the way that good Shakespeare always is, but so rich in fury and form, that it passes by like a swath.

Much earlier this morning, I woke with a jolt, my conscience stabbed by some dream or other, and immediately I conjured the image of one of witches as we first see her, near the ground, her limbs entwined like a dangerous, malevolent insect, hissing her lines to the camera. Reader, in that moment, lying alone in bed on a cold night in my otherwise empty apartment, I, too, was stricken.

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