We've done Macbeth on film. A lot. Even more than that, honestly. It's been adapted in so many ways in cinema over the years that it's hard to imagine that we'd need another one. History will tell if Joel Coen's The Tragedy of Macbeth is indeed essential to the canon of William Shakespeare film adaptations. Right now, though, I can say it's plenty good enough to justify returning to familiar territory. Much like Steven Spielberg's West Side Story remake, The Tragedy of Macbeth takes a tale you know and makes it seem brand-new again. Impressively, Coen does this without gimmicky updates or attempts to make the text "cool".
While out beyond his kingdom's borders, Macbeth (Denzel Washington) is informed by a witch (Kathryn Hunter) that he'll secure great power as a king. It's an impressive prophecy for Macbeth, but it's one that, with encouragement from Lady Macbeth (Frances McDormand), he becomes convinced can only be achieved through bloodshed. So starts a series of massacres, which see Macbeth slicing throat of anyone who gets in his way. However, the severity of his actions began to weigh on the man's mind all while Macduff (Corey Hawkin) begins to plot a scheme of revenge against this mad ruler of Scotland.
The visual style of The Tragedy of Macbeth is an immediately striking one. The imagery captrues the haunting nature of the works of Ingmar Bergman, the intentional artificality of the play scenes in Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters, and both the intimacy and the scarceness of a black-box theater play.Combining all these influences into one makes for a visually impressive experience, with everything coated in black-and-white coloring and told in sparsley-decorated sets. The castle belonging to the titular character is never shown in full in exterior shots and its interior environments are intentionally vaguely-defined. It's practically the suggestion of a castle, one that, like the hotel at the heart of The Shining, seems to go on forever and ever indoors
The haunting emptiness is reflected in the sparing use of a score, with a constant bump-bump-bumping noise on the soundtrack being more prominent to the ears than a traditional orchestral accompaniment. It all creates such an eerie feeling I haven't always gotten from prior MacBeth film adaptations and this sensation is compounded by the decision to depict the principal characters as being over the age of 60. The finite amount of time Macbeth and his wife have in their life lingers quietly over their actions. This emphasis on their mortality only heightens the creepiness of the production and add an extra sense of tragedy (no pun intended) to the slaughter that follows.
I mentioned West Side Story earlier, but allow me to return to comparing The Tragedy of Macbeth to that newest Spieberg triumph in how both recontextualize familiar moments both of their respective pieces of source material to outstanding effect. In the case of Macbeth, I found myself impressed by how familiar pieces of dialogue get rendered brand new by unique pieces of staging. Macbeth's query of "Is that a dagger I see before me?" is here shown as the "dagger" being the door handle to a fateful room where he'll commit his horrific murders. Meanwhile, the mental anguish informing Lady Macbeth's "Out damn spot!" line is powerfully felt through surrounding the character with pitch-black darkness.
All these thoughtful reinterptations of some of Shakespeare's most famous lines are handled beautifully by a cast that excels under the restrained creative direction of this enterprise. With the sparse surroundings drawing most of the focus primarily on the performances, rightful acting legends Washington and McDormand don't mess around and deliver just the kind of stirring turns you'd expect actors of their caliber to churn out. The standout by far for me, though, is Kathryn Hunter in a new vision of the witch. Her opening scene alone conveys an eerie otherworldly quality and her creaky voice can make a few syllables something that forces the the hair on the back of your neck to go straight up. It's a bravura performance you won't soon be forgetting.
The Tragedy of Macbeth is an odd outlier in Joel Coen's filmography in some ways, including its lack of dark humor, something that permeated even the most brutal of earlier directorial efforts from the Coen Brothers (even No Country for Old Men had time for some glib gags). That's not a complaint, though, rather just a reflection of what a unique creative enterprise this is. Rather than rehashing what he's already done as a filmmaker or even just leaning on classic visions of what Macbeth can be, Coen delivers an idiosyncratic vision told with impressively precise visuals and powerful performances. With these achievements, The Tragedy of Macbeth leaves no question on whether or not we needed another adaptation of Macbeth.
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