MOVIE REVIEW – The tragedy of Macbeth from the early 17th century is Shakespeare’s shortest tragedy. This time, director and screenwriter Joel Coen, working here without his brother Ethan, has taken on this film version with his wife, Frances McDormand. McDormand is brilliant as Lady Macbeth, as is the other main character, Denzel Washington as Macbeth: a fierce warrior who covets the crown and, quite literally, gets bloodshot in the process.

Anyone who wonders why Joel Coen would want to adapt one of Shakespeare’s most famous and gruesome plays has probably not seen many Coen films. On the surface, the material’s ironic take on human nature seems to fit the bill perfectly. But the play is really about what motivates people to do terrible things, and Coen – who wrote the screenplay based on the play – knows this well.

Opportunity breeds murderers

The casting of Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand as the dashing Scottish general and his wife, whose dreams of royalty turn them into murderers, casts the material in a different light. When these characters are played by actors who are past middle age – almost past the point where they could derive much pleasure from the power they have acquired, let alone the wealth – their desperation becomes the point. This is their last chance. They don’t want to die as a side character, content to wear the halo of maybe-they-could-have-been nobility. They are horrible, fascinating, but at the same time frighteningly human-like an elderly Bonnie and Clyde, willing to do anything for their ‘glory’ and power.

Black and white

The film opens with crows circling in an alabaster sky – the cinematographer Bruno Delbonnel is responsible for the elegant and retro-feeling black-and-white visuals. Denzel’s Macbeth and his right-hand man Banquo (Bertie Carvel) are walking through a sandy, moon-like landscape, discussing a recent victorious battle when they stumble upon a vision: a creature we’ve already met. The three witches in the story are played here by one captivating actor, Kathryn Hunter, as an incredibly stretchy, creepy gnome who can squeeze a severed thumb between her flexible toes. She speaks in a whisper, in a creepy voice that sounds as if it has been rubbed raw by centuries of sand running through an hourglass. Paradoxically, his early appearance in the film both pauses and revs up the film. He is the single point of no return.

Coen shows him to us and Macbeth as a triple mirage. His prophecy – that Macbeth will be king – is gradually acted out by Macbeth and written in a letter he sends home to his wife, Lady Macbeth, played by McDormand. She reads it eagerly as he walks down a minimalist corridor lined with tall candlesticks, one of which provides the flame with which he burns the letter, sending it flying through a window into the night like a discarded planet. Its future is so bright it is already aflame.

Why?

The primary question for adaptations – especially in the case of Macbeth, which has been reinterpreted on screen more than two dozen times – is why? In other cases, the main reason is simply to modernise – to present yet another classic play adapted for the present. The answer here seems simple: Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand, two theatre-trained titans whose age and “world-weariness” intensify the urgency that Macbeth and his lady so desperately feel when the royal title eludes them. Unlike previous films about the younger Cawdor Thanes, this is about two characters whose clock is ticking and who will do anything for power.

As Macbeth learns that he has been given a prophecy to seize the throne of Scotland – the murder of King Duncan (Donald Gleeson) – his blood-soaked machinations to fulfil it oscillate between despair and apathy. Nearing the end of their lives, having already endured so much hardship for so little reward, this pair would instead go out with a bang among the survivors. After all, what have they got to lose?

Of course, as we’ve known from the play for hundreds of years: this bold ambition is eventually dashed, and tragedy strikes.

Joel is a masterpiece on his own, but not for everyone

This is the first film Joel has directed without his brother Ethan, but it is still a thematic work that owes its existence to their four-decade-long filmmaking career. In many ways, Macbeth itself feels like another of the brother and sister films, following characters who commit crimes, hide evidence, and try to evade justice until it finally catches up with them inexorably.

Macbeth on Apple TV+ is definitely not for everyone. It’s one thing to watch a classic Shakespeare play in the theatre, but it’s another to watch a film adaptation of the essentially faster-paced play with subtitles. In the absence of a dubbing, the subtitles are a classic translation of Shakespeare’s original, archaic text, which is no small task to read continuously. The black-and-white, 4:3 screen size may also appeal more to viewers used to classic arthouse films. In return, however, the performances of the two main characters are brilliant. The film’s unique, incredibly dark atmosphere is an incredible portrayal of the story of madness, sick lust for power and murderous corruption, which is unfortunately not an unknown story in our country.

-BadSector-