Rating: R
Runtime: 1 hour, 45 minutes
Director: Joel Coen
Quick Impressions:
First of all, I want to live in the Macbeths’ house! Their castle is amazing! They appear to have no possessions whatsoever. There are absolutely no furnishings in this castle unless someone needs to go to sleep, eat a meal, or wash their hands repeatedly.
I am so jealous that I could start reciting lines from Othello. (Iago’s in my head right now, pretending to offer me helpful admonitions.) Our house is so cluttered that I keep expecting that distracting Muppet from Labyrinth to show up any second offering me all of my old toys. (I’m pretty sure I’m trapped in some kind of life-stealing illusion.)
I wish we had a castle of requirement like the Macbeths. Need a bed? It’s there. Time to wake up? Bed’s gone. Need a nightmare? Presto! Your house now has a weird trinity of witch(es?) instead of a ceiling!
This is the craziest place! As I watched, I would alternate between happily pretending they designed it all themselves—like that amazing dagger-shaped door handle! It’s made for them!—and thinking how delightful it would be to watch a reality show about the Macbeths house hunting until the realtor finally showed them the perfect place! (The position of the castle seems to move around, too. As my daughter said as we admired Frances McDormand standing starkly on a cliff, “It’s wherever it needs to be at the moment to get the most striking shot.”)
The Good:
I love the set design and cinematography in this movie. I’ve liked Bruno Delbonnel’s cinematography before, but never as much as this. I feel I need to watch this film seven hundred more times before I’m even ready to make any sort of informed comment about its visuals. I do love them, though. This is a striking movie. (And there’s plenty of stabbing, too!)
The other thing that I really loved about this particular Macbeth—other than Frances McDormand’s repeated unnerving sidelong glances that seem to say, “Don’t forget. I’m Lady Macbeth, you know”—is the casting and performances of the entire MacDuff family.
I love Lady Macduff’s scene. I performed that scene in college at an ill-fated Macbeth audition. Had I been cast in the role, I think I could have very movingly delivered the lines, “For the poor wren/ the most diminutive of birds will fight,/ her young ones in her nest, against the owl./ All is the fear and nothing is the love/ as little is the wisdom where the flight so runs against all reason.”
Unfortunately, during the audition, at the very last second, I decided to raise my arms like wings and pretend I was an owl while saying the word “owl.” The instant I did this—before I had even finished the motion—I knew it was a horrible, horrible, horrible mistake that would haunt me forever like Banquo’s ghost at a dinner party (which is really a shame because I feel a genuine connection to Lady Macduff in this scene, and if the director had said, “Hey could you do that again while not spontaneously pretending to be an owl for no reason?” I think I could have interpreted the words quite well. (A friend consoled me by pointing out that the roles of Lady Macbeth and Lady Macduff were played by the same actress in that production—to let Lady Macduff fill in the gaps in Lady Macbeth’s psychological progression—and that the role was already cast, anyway. I’m not sure why anybody was even asked to read for it. Maybe to see if anyone would pretend to be an owl, or just to give the women who had shown up to audition something to do since that was the only female part.)
I made such a complete fool of myself that I’m surprised I can stand to watch this scene. But I read pretty late at the audition, so I’ve seen it done a lot of times. (Nobody else pretended to be an owl, though.) (That was a pretty funny audition in retrospect. There were like seven million women there, and the only female part was already cast!) (Maybe it was really a psychology experiment.) My point, though, is that I really like the way Moses Ingram plays Lady Macduff in this movie. She stands out from the other Lady Macduff’s I’ve seen (and, unlike me, in a good way!). And Ethan Hutchison is fantastic as the child. He delivers the lines with greater clarity than many adults I’ve seen pretending to be a child! He’s quite good.
Corey Hawkins is also excellent as Macduff. (Granted, it probably helps that Macduff gets some of my favorite lines in the play. I’m just quite partial to “All my pretty ones?” I love the moment when Macduff reacts to the news about his family no matter who plays Macduff, but Hawkins is excellent in this scene.
I was also quite taken with the way the play presents the witches, allowing Kathryn Hunter to play all three (and the old man). Hunter’s portrayal brings genuine, unsettling weirdness. Her broken contortions are the stuff of horror movies. (I can easily imagine the witch-obsessed James I watching in morbid delight.) (I kept imagining him watching this film, sitting on his thrones and clapping his hands in glee like a cartoon character.)
(I remember as a kid buying a book that was a compilation of Mad old magazine sketches when I was a kid. One of them presented Shakespeare plots as a primer. “See the witches stir. Stir, stir, stir. What are the witches stirring? What the witches are stirring is, up trouble! The trouble is for Macbeth. Surprise Macbeth!” It went something like that. Even though it’s very silly, I’ve always found that hysterically funny. There is nothing funny about Kathryn Hunter’s witches.)
(Do people in academia still think Thomas Middleton wrote much of the weird sisters’ material? I’ve been away from the university so long that I don’t know if current opinion on that has changed.)
I also really liked Stephen Root as the porter. I would not have thought of casting Stephen Root in Macbeth, but he makes a great porter. (I had the sense that many of his lines were cut, but it could simply be that I enjoyed his performance, and that made his part go by faster. I’ve never been a particular fan of that character.)
My daughter was quite taken with the murderer with the deep voice. (I forgot which one that was!) The cast is pretty impressive, top to bottom. (Brendan Gleeson is Duncan. Alex Hassell from Cowboy Bebop is Ross. Miles Anderson is Lennox.) My dad liked Sean Patrick Thomas as Monteith.
And then, of course, there are the Macbeths themselves, the world’s worst power couple. Both Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand are quite good, as you would expect. He seems likely to get an Oscar nomination, which is fine with me. (I’m always happy to see Denzel Washington nominated.) Best Actress is a lot more crowded, and Frances McDormand plays Lady Macbeth exactly as you would imagine Frances McDormand would play Lady Macbeth. Washington makes some choices (particularly in his line readings) that are slightly more unexpected and add something to the role (showing us that Washington is playing the part, not someone else).
I love Frances McDormand, though. (And I was so pleased when my daughter remembered her saying, “I have given suck, and know, / how tender ’tis to love the babe that milks me./ I would, while it was smiling in my face,/ have plucked my nipple from his boneless gums / and dashed the brains out, had I so sworn / as you have done to this.” She asked, “These are the original words, right? For some reason, I remember those lines, even though we tried to read this a really long time ago.” I think we read it together when she was in third grade or so.
“I probably stressed that part because I really like it,” I told her. (I’m not in favor of dashing infants’ brains out, to be clear. I just find Lady Macbeth quite a fascinating character. She’s pretty extreme. When she gets a scheme, she’s all in.)
One thing that I appreciate about this adaptation in general is that the actors do interpret their lines well. (Sometimes with Shakespeare screen adaptations that use the original language, the actors don’t seem to know what the words they’re saying mean. And other times, even though the actors clearly know what they mean, the story remains fairly inaccessible to a general audience. This version is pretty easy to follow. Both Washington and McDormand get an A+ for line delivery from me. They know what they’re talking about, and so do we.
I need to watch this film again just to focus on the performances of Washington and McDormand. (Then I need to watch it again focusing just on that crazy castle that half reminds me of every piece of art I’ve ever seen. I said helplessly, “This castle reminds me so much of…is it Escher, Picasso, Magritte, Dalí?” It’s certainly striking! Let’s say that.) [Update 1/17: A friend just let me know. The artist I was groping for is Giorgio de Chirico!] (I should also watch one more time when I’m alone at night (and my son isn’t playing a game on his tablet) just to drink in the score. I loved Carter Burwell’s score, too.
Best Scene:
My heart jumped out of my chest (and a burst of shocked profanity burst out of my lips), when Macbeth has a nightmare and looks above him. (When you get to the scene, you’ll know.) I thought this was an innovative spin on a classic moment.
Best Scene Visually:
Well the castle is a work of art (or several!), but I actually love the moment when we first get a look at the shack with all the broken lines (so evocative of the unsettling, broken lines of the witch’s body near the opening of the film). My daughter exclaimed, “Where are we now?! Inside a snow globe??!”
This film has a lot of great visuals. I need to watch it again.
Best Action Sequence:
The introduction to the witch(es) certainly got my attention!
The Negatives:
I was happy to see Harry Melling again. (I was one of the apparent weirdos who really loved The Ballad of Buster Scruggs. I didn’t just like it. I liked it a lot. (I remember at the time a lot of people saying, “Anyone who liked that is an idiot!”) Well sorry. (The National Board of Review liked it, too.) Melling’s segment I initially found off putting, but then it grew on me until I finally decided that I loved it. I also quite enjoyed Melling dumping spiders all over his face in The Devil All the Time. (I wrote half of a really great, hilarious review of that movie, and then I woke up and my mother was dead, so I never finished it because I couldn’t continue in the glib tone with which I’d begun.)
Malcolm is one of my favorite characters in Macbeth. (Perhaps this is because the actor who played Malcolm in that college play I wasn’t cast in gave an outstanding performance.) And Melling is a good actor who should have a promising career beyond the Harry Potter franchise. (Kathryn Hunter is in Harry Potter movies, too. She’s Mrs. Figg.) But I’m not sure that I like the way he plays Malcolm. What I really don’t like, though, is how much of Malcolm’s part is cut. Macbeth is such a short play already. (I mean it’s possible we already only have the abridged, touring version as it is.) Why cut any of it? That’s really not necessary. I don’t understand why they get rid of most of the conversation between Malcolm and Ross, and I really don’t understand the point of not letting Malcolm deliver the last lines of the play. So I’ll have to watch The Tragedy of Macbeth again and consider Joel Coen’s reasons for doing this.
(I suppose there’s no reason to make Macbeth at all if you’re not going to put your own spin on it, unless your wife wants to play Lady Macbeth, which to be honest I had assumed was the reason. I’ll have to scrounge to scrounge up some interviews with Joel Coen and watch the movie again (at least once).
(You know what I would love to make? An animated Macbeth.) (I don’t have the skillset necessary to do that, though.) (But what would be really great would be an animated adaptation of James Thurber’s “The Macbeth Murder Mystery.” You could make the “present day” conversation in black-and-white, and the woman’s crazy take on the story as a full color cartoon, or make the “present” a New Yorker cartoon, then make the Macbeth parts in full color.)
Even though I loved Hunter’s interpretation of the witches, I found the parts with Banquo’s ghost a bit disappointing. (Now, to be fair, when I was in grad school, I saw an Actors From the London Stage performance of Macbeth, and they unexpectedly played that banquet scene for comedy. It was the funniest thing I’d ever seen in my life (possibly largely because I was caught off guard). So maybe I’m a bit biased.) I know Macbeth isn’t intended to be a riotous comedy. (And this film is much, much less agonizing to watch than the Roman Polanski version. It’s also much better to watch than the surprise musical version I saw on stage once when I was first dating my husband.)
I need to watch this movie again. I spent too much of the last part of it arguing with my father about whether we’re direct descendants of James I. (Trust me. We’re not.) (I think he was getting confused because he’s James VI of Scotland, and only James I of England. We seemed to go through the birthdate and genealogical records of every other James who has ever lived anywhere near Scotland. I’m sure we are descended from somebody named James, but if it’s James I, I’m writing a stern letter to Queen Elizabeth II right now contesting her right to my throne.)
Overall:
The Tragedy of Macbeth is a visually striking adaptation of what is already one of Shakespeare’s most compelling and accessible plays (in performance). It would make a great introduction to Shakespeare for curious audiences because the line delivery of the entire cast is exceptionally good. I want to watch this again several times before I comment too specifically on the performances of Denzel Washington or Frances McDormand, but they’re both very good, and this is a movie I’d be happy to re-watch dozens of times (and probably will).