Whether it was her accidentally get her foot stuck in a bucket ("I'm making a cast for Laurie so he remembers what nice feet I have!") or her amazing speech to Laurie about how, for a woman, marriage is a business proposition or...yep, here I go, talking all day about the wonder Pugh brought to Amy March. But before any of those roles, Pugh immediately leaped onto everybody's radar with her leading turn in Lady MacBeth. This is a 2017 motion picture written by Alice Birch, directed by William Oldroyd and based on a book penned by Nikolai Leskob. If you're wondering how Pugh was able to ascend so fast, well, her work in Lady Macbeth should provide all the answers.
Contrary to what the title might have you think, Lady Macbeth is not an adaptation of the classic William Shakespeare play. Cue Nelson Muntz remarking "I can think of at least two things wrong with that title!" No, this is instead a story about Katherine Lester (Florence Pugh), who is trapped in a loveless marriage to Alexander Lester (Paul Hilton). Her husband and his father, Boris (Christopher Fairbank, channeling Big Ralph Ineson Energy), see Katherine only as an object to produce an heir. Katherine yearns for something a bit more than that and to satisfy the emptiness inside her, she strikes up an affair with one of her husband's employees, Sebastian (Cosmo Jarvis).
From there begins a story about a forbidden romance that presents relentless challenges for Katherine at every turn. She wants to control her own destiny and is willing to hurt anyone to get her way. The extremes to which she'll go to maintain autonomy over her life provides the most fascinating moments of Birch's screenplay. Her writing unflinchingly explores all sorts of conflicts hinging on class and societally-implemented power structures all without sacrificing the intimate scope of Lady Macbeth (much of the film takes place in just the mansion Katherine calls home). It's utterly incredible just how well Lady Macbeth explores such complex material, particularly in regard to the morality of the protagonist.
Katherine is the kind of character whose motivations are clear but whose actions are bound to get under your skin. This isn't so much true when she's taking down or challenging figures in high positions of power like Alexander or Boris. But Birch's script shows that, even though Katherine is the victim of societally-ingrained misogyny towards women, Katherine herself can be somebody who exerts toxic power over another human being. Specifically, Katherine's maid Anna (Naomi Ackie from Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker...holy hell that was her?!?!) either receives plenty of ire from Katherine or Katherine just watches Anna being berated by Boris without doing anything. In fact, thinking back on it, it's interesting to note that much of Katherine's upward mobility in the household comes at the expense of people of color, particularly in the third act which sees Katherine executing her most despicable actions.
The story of Katherine is one that reminded me of Bong Joon-ho's Parasite (a totally original point of comparison for a movie about class, I know). Specifically in regards to how both movies depict the all-too-real phenomenon marginalized communities scrambling to hurt one another just to get ahead. Watching Katherine use people of color as steps on a ladder to move to a more secure place societal evoked many sights from Parasite, like the scene of the Kim family, former housekeeper Gook Moon-gwang and her husband fighting over an incriminating cell phone. Anytime your movie draws up positive comparisons to Parasite, you know you're doing something right and Lady Macbeth does untold amounts of things right.
All the while this class conscious material is transpiring, Birch makes Katherine's motivations crystal clear and cleverly-realized. This is especially true in regards to new challenges that crop up at the end of the second-act regarding a heretofore unknown offspring of Alexander that makes it impossible for Katherine & Sebastian to live together. Birch makes Katherine's life something you'd get from wishing on a monkey's paw. Each of her schemes, meant to bring her total freedom, only constricts her further. The place Katherine occupies in the structure of society isn't just reflected by Birch's writing, it's also beautifully reflected in the direction of William Oldroyd, particularly in a brilliantly-executed visual motif.
Throughout Lady Macbeth, Katherine is framed in a manner that sees her placed center-frame with plenty of space around her. If she's talking to someone while this shot occurs, the other party is either heavily obscured or absent entirely. In just this shot, the way Katherine is isolated from the people around her is vividly conveyed. Alexander and Boris see Katherine as lower than dirt so of course they'd keep her as isolated as she is in these individual shots. Cleverly, Oldroyd returns to this particular type of framing to reflect the way other supporting characters are minimized or dehumanized by Katherine, primarily a number of shots with Anna as well as separate shots dedicated to child character Teddy. The way Oldroyd so subtly establishes this Katherine-fixated visual motif and then recontextualizes it throughout the movie to reflect the marginalized nature of other characters is just...God, it's so good.
And then there's Florence Pugh in the lead role. Even after her vast amount of range across her trio of 2019 performances, I still wasn't prepared for just how mesmerizingly assured Pugh would be here as Katherine. When she's insisting Anna not help a gasping Boris in a locked-up pantry, Pugh only needs a few words to command a sense of authority that makes a viewer just as shocked as the stirred Anna. Pugh imbues this role with simultaneous flashes of humanity, frustration and perseverance that vividly realizes the emotions motivating Katherine's actions. You can feel for all the misery she's endured in one scene before Pugh (particularly in the last half-hour) makes Katherine somebody so utterly chilling. It's a captivating performance that doesn't just help seal Lady Macbeth's status as an incredible, it's also the kind of turn that launches someone to Pugh's current level of stardom.
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