Direction: Joel Coen
Country: USA
The peerless American filmmaker Joel Coen (Barton Fink, 1991; Fargo, 1996; No Country For Old Men, 2007) goes solo for the first time in The Tragedy of Macbeth. Apparently, his brother Ethan resolved to retire from making movies, if not forever, at least temporarily. Shakespeare’s Macbeth is a widely known tragedy that has been taken to the screen by equally adroit directors such as Orson Welles (1948), Akira Kurosawa and Roman Polanski (1971), who, with their own vision, depicted the ambition, guilt, fate, and human suffering that mark the work.
The plot here remains unaltered, but this stylistically somber version got all the moments one would wish for, becoming a vehicle perfectly tailored for Coen’s peculiar eye, Bruno Delbonnel’s finely calibrated black-and-white photography, and strangely captivating performances by Denzel Washington as the powerful Scottish general-turned-tyrant Macbeth, and Frances McDormand as his scheming wife.
Wisely framed, the film is a feast of oblique catches, unexpected architectural forms, and misty Scotland landscapes where the characters appear and disappear in the fog. The minimal settings make the characters look like giants in huge empty rooms; their shadows projected on the walls to a creepy effect. Viewers are, in this sense, subsumed into Coen’s perspective, having the opportunity to enjoy entrancing moments of wicked conspiracy, madness, and ruthless killing.
The Tragedy of Macbeth is at once wonderful and exasperating; a demented and beautiful delight shaped with risk-taking boldness and considerable maturation in the proceedings. As the Witches would say, “seek to know no more” and watch the film yourself.
