I’m a Shakespeare guy, so there was never a question of if I would get to Joel Coen’s The Tragedy of Macbeth so much as a when. Sure, he was obviously going to cast his wife Frances McDormand as Lady Macbeth, but if Spielberg can remake a classic musical and make it his own, then I think one half of the Coen Brothers can do an impressionistic version of one of William Shakespeare’s best-known plays. If anything, a Shakespearean tragedy does fit into the Coen wheelhouse where the best most characters can hope for in one of their movies is to break even. Their movies often show characters getting tragic endings, and that includes the comedies.
So, really, one of the Coens doing Shakespeare was also probably not so much an “if” as a “when”.
The story of Macbeth is fairly well-known, and Coen doesn’t really change anything. A trio of witches (all, creatively, played by the same actress, Kathryn Hunter) gives a series of predictions to Scottish noblemen/soldiers Macbeth (Denzel Washington) and Banquo (Bertie Carvel) that promise the crown to Macbeth and also to Banquo’s descendants. Banquo opts to do nothing. Macbeth, however, immediately thinks dark thoughts on the subject, but it is only after he has shared the news with his wife (McDormand) that the two hatch a plan to murder Scotland’s saintly king Duncan (Brendan Gleeson). Though in the short term that does get Macbeth the throne, Duncan’s son Malcolm (Harry Melling) and another nobleman Macduff (Corey Hawkins) eventually lead an uprising and take back power. Along the way, both Macbeths die, but not before Macbeth takes a lot of his potential problems with him, most notably Banquo and Macduff’s wife and kids. All that is still more or less true. There are ghosts, murders, prophecies, and a whole lot of other things from Shakespeare’s work. So, what makes this particular retelling unique?
It comes down, in terms of the story, to two things. The first is how the Macbeths are portrayed. Many productions have shown Lady Macbeth as a horrid woman, screeching crimes and questioning her husband’s manhood in the harshest way possible. Those lines are still there, but the way McDormand says them and plays them suggest a woman who is more tired than murderous. What she’s tired of seems to be the same thing that’s bothering Macbeth in the beginning of the movie: that he has been doing a lot for Duncan but not really getting the recognition for it that they both more or less think he deserves. It makes him something of a frustrated middle manager, and she’s just trying to egg him on to do something for his career because if anyone deserves to be king, it’s Macbeth. He’s earned it. It is worth remembering the Macbeths may be the only long-time married couple that actually seem to be happy with each other. The other married couples in Shakespeare’s plays tend to either be newlyweds or couples with problems (think Iago and Emilia or Leontes and Hermione). The Macbeths actually are a good couple. It’s just that their goals are awful for everyone around them. That’s reflected in this version where, unlike some productions, it sure does look like Macbeth is far more evil than his wife, a woman who was involved in a bad plot, but would have never gone on to do the many things her husband does in the play.
But then there’s something else going on, and that mostly involves a minor character from the original play, namely the Thane of Ross. Ross’s role in the play is mostly to act as a messenger, telling other characters what’s going on for events they were not there to witness. He was the one to deliver the news of Macbeth’s acquisition of the Thaneship of Cawdor, the one who tried to warn Lady Macduff that she might be in danger, and then later still informed Macduff about the fate of his wife and kids. There have been some interesting things done with the character, such as when Ian McDiarmid played the character in the 70s as a self-serving government functionary, but here he’s played by actor Alex Hassell as a character who is always on the outskirts, watching, and when he acts, he’s acting for the benefit of the realm, not necessarily the king. In a way, it seems to suggest Ross is Scotland made flesh. If this were a conspiracy theory, he’d be the Deep State. Likewise, there’s a brief moment that caught my eye because it’s a moment most movies skip: a messenger who tries to warn Lady Macduff of her coming murder. I know that character because my one and only time acting on a stage was that character and his one speech, and this movie included the character in the form of Lady Macbeth’s older maidservant, a character that appeared in other scenes and, like Ross, decided to work against the Macbeths. Shakespeare’s plays always show chaos flows when the wrong man sits on the throne. Macbeth is the wrong man, and this movie version shows everyone seems to know it right from the start.
But that’s just the actors. Coen also shot the movie in black-and-white on sets that were more impressions of buildings and landscapes than anything else. It’s a stark, barren place where even the castles look either empty or unfinished. It gives the movie something of a theatrical setting, but none of the actors are giving what could be considered a theatrical performance. So, these are cinematic acting styles on what looks like a modern stage set using Shakespeare’s language. Quite frankly, I loved every second of it. So, while I wasn’t surprised that Joel Coen could or would make a good Shakespearean film, I am happy to report that I was right that he could.
Grade: A
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