Critic’s rating: ****
(105 minutes; R)
The cadence and very words of Shakespearean dialogue can be extremely off putting to 2022 ears. That holds true even for those who have studied or at least have been exposed to the Bard ‘s works off and on — whether in high school, college or simply through seeing some of the many film adaptations of his plays, from overblown internationally produced costume dramas to straight-up contemporary retellings. The latter, including the NYC-set Ethan Hawke vehicle “Hamlet” (2000), can be quite jarring in their approach to updating a classic.
But try this: Just go with the sentences tumbling from the mouths of Denzel Washington and others in the new “MacBeth.” Let the sound of the antiquated language tumble into your ears, without worrying about whether you immediately catch the full meaning of each line, and you may soon find that the artfully delivered words — elevated, precise and frequently characterized by double or triple meanings — accumulate into a powerful storyline.
The tale of MacBeth, a narrative that has resonated so strongly in so many plays, books, movies and stage productions since its publication nearly 400 years ago, should be vaguely familiar to anyone who ever took a literature class. The title character, a prideful Scottish general, crosses paths with a trio of witches, who assure him that he will soon ascend his country’s throne. His wife, feeding Macbeth’s impatience, and driven by her own raging ambitions, urges him to murder the king. Opportunity knocks, and he does the deed. So begins a bloody killing spree, yielding a civil war.
The latest movie adaptation of the widely loved play marks the solo directorial debut of Joel Coen, best known as half of the Coen Brothers directing-producing team with his younger sibling Ethan Coen, and responsible for a long run of remarkable, sometimes brilliant movies that often touch on dark currents and comic elements, often in the same films. Perhaps not surprisingly, Joel Coen, who also wrote the screenplay and produced, makes a great match with the disturbing themes — murder, mayhem, greed, jealousy — at the heart of the story.
What does the oldest Coen brother bring to the Shakespeare party? For starters, there’s the casting, which is colorblind. Washington, always a welcome presence on the big and small screens, embodies all the egotism, arrogance and calculated, cold-blooded lust for power of the protagonist, as does Frances McDormand (aka the director’s wife) as the ever-scheming Lady MacBeth. The top-shelf ensemble also includes actors portraying King Duncan (Brendan Gleeson), his sons Malcolm (Harry Melling) and Donalbain (Matt Helm), MacBeth’s old pal Banquo (Bertie Carvel), MacDuff (Corey Hawkins) and Lady MacDuff (Moses Ingram). In a brief what’s-he-doing-here? appearance, Stephen Root plays a comic, drunken Porter.
Perhaps most striking is Kathryn Hunter. In a bit of cinematic sleight-of-hand, she portrays all three witches, rubber-limbed, grimacing and practically hissing as they bend themselves into impossible contortions. As the supernatural hag, three times over, Hunter is nearly as creepy as the stringy haired spectral girls commonly seen in Japanese horror flicks.
The biggest star of this MacBeth show, though, is the look and feel of the black-and-white film, shot by French cinematographer Bruno Belbonnel (who worked with the Coens on “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs” and “Inside Llewyn Davis”) in a nearly square aspect ratio on L.A. sound stages, with production design by Stefan Dechant (“Avatar,” “Jurassic Park”).
It’s all about the gorgeous play of shadows and light, played against cavernous spaces inside a castle that seems ghostly and practically empty; the visuals clearly reference German Expressionist films of the 1920s and early ’30s. Sheets of long, thin white curtains billow along long halls, dark shadows appear to catch some characters in the crosshairs, and weird, hallucinogenic sights — is that a dagger or a door handle? — appear and then suddenly vanish.
Coen’s film is characterized by a certain claustrophobic vibe, the better for viewers to focus on still-resonant dialogue and performances that make one wonder what it would be like to see this particular group of actors reprise their roles in the flesh and blood one day, on a Broadway stage. That’s not necessarily wishful thinking, given Coen’s recent “A Play is a Poem,” a collection of one-act plays that ran for a month in Los Angeles. Slated to hit New York in May 2020, it was postponed due to the Covid shutdowns. A boy can dream.
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