A | The Thane of Glamis sniffs out a pathway to the kingship. Directed by Joel Coen Starring Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand Review by Jon Kissel |
The films of Joel and Ethan Coen have a recurring set of themes, and over their almost 40 year career, those themes have been applied across all genres. They’ve arguably made the best comedy, the best film about a musician, the best Western, the best Hollywood satire, and the best small-time crime film of recent film history, and with The Tragedy of Macbeth, Joel Coen has made the best English-speaking Shakespeare adaptation, with only Akira Kurosawa’s Ran as competition. Without his brother, Joel Coen doesn’t miss a beat in a film that reaches objective perfection in scene after scene. This is an assemblage of actors, crew members, and creative contributors without peer, all working in sync under a director at the peak of his powers. The Tragedy of Macbeth represents the end of a wildly successful partnership, as Ethan Coen has reportedly moved into theater, but there’s no diminishing of what the viewer can expect when a film has the Coen name on it.
There’s only so much I can be expected to say about Macbeth itself, heavily adapted and dissected as it is. Fate, expectation, ambition, all of that is of course tied into the story as plainly and clearly as it would have been centuries ago when it was first produced. What distinguishes this version from others are the homages to far earlier directors, and emphases that Coen keys in on, to be discussed later. The visuals and the framing and the black and white cinematography, immaculately shot by Bruno Delbonnel, pulled me all the way back to the 1920’s with The Passion of Joan of Arc, a silent film that probably contained the best cinematic performance for decades. Most of that film by Carl Theodore Dreyer is shot in closeup on the actor portraying Joan, Renee Jeanne Falconetti, as she agonizes over whether to recant her beliefs or not. Those kinds of dark night of the soul movies get replicated and built upon in the mid-century by directors like Robert Bresson who makes the same kind of crisis of faith movies that Paul Schrader would eventually bring to America.
These are old cinematic traditions to bring to modern audiences, to say nothing of Shakespeare’s dialogue itself. Black and white cinematography, a compressed frame, hard to understand dialogue, spare production design, lots of tight close ups and silhouettes, all of that sounds like ingredients of a film that’s standoffish, if not impenetrable and cold. Instead, the opposite happens. The Tragedy of Macbeth is alive, as surely as Passion of Joan of Arc or Au Hasard Balthazar or First Reformed is alive. This is a story about agony and despair, about regret and shame, and it affected me on a raw level. Coen taps into unique scenarios embedded in Macbeth that other adapters might shift focus on or ignore altogether. The unpredictable danger of being subject to the whims of a deranged leader are as terrifying here as any horror film. The pain of being the messenger rings through, as characters are repeatedly shown to hold the keys to a crux in the recipient’s life that will hereafter separate it into before and after. Coen’s adaptation is a formal exercise that looks like homework to the average moviegoer, but the assignment is rich and larded with everything that makes film such a rewarding medium.
A career spent making great film after great film means that a director can just attract the most talented people to themselves, and so much of Tragedy of Macbeth is seeing various craftspeople as kings and queens of their respective hills. Delbonnel shoots the unquestioned best-looking film of 2021, and he does it in black and white that looks impossibly crisp. The use of shadow and light serve as their own barriers within the frame, further isolating or accentuating the characters. That being said, the production design of the various white marble castles lends itself to framing, as so much of it is sharp corners and clean surfaces. Macbeth sleeps on a slab without a pillow, and that tells me about all I need to know of his character. The score, by Coen regular collaborator Carter Burwell, is sparse but effective alongside a top-notch sound design that emphasizes the knocking that’s in Macbeth’s head and every strange sound the witches make.
With the construction and capturing of all this, the actors come in to elevate it further still. Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand can tick these required roles for great actors off their lists. He plays Macbeth before the murders as competent and assured, like a classic Denzel character, but his decompensation as his guilt devours him is something new and deranged that, at times, out-villains his role in Training Day. McDormand’s great accomplishment here is conveying the stress of holding down the fort, and watching herself fail to do so. There’s no coming back when your husband embarrasses himself like he does here, and these small changes in McDormand’s face bring that across. As Macduff, Corey Hawkins is revelatory. As great as they often are, Coen films rarely draw tears, and I never expected an adaptation of a known story to do so, but there’s Hawkins with his world-ending shock at hearing about his family’s fate. Alex Hassell, as the inscrutable Ross, is an actor I’ve never seen before, but his particular silhouette, with his tunic’s long sleeves, always served as the alert that I was about to spend a too-brief scene with a great actor. Lastly, Kathryn Hunter as the three witches gives the performance of the year, a physically indelible turn that’s calculated and considered at every step. A known quantity to me since she played Cleopatra’s body slave on HBO’s Rome, her distinctive husky voice and otherworldly motions are put to unforgettable use. I thought the throat-singing Sardaukar priest in Dune was going to be my most memorable vocal performance for 2021, and then Kathryn Hunter barfed up a finger.
The Tragedy of Macbeth even works as a coherent piece of Coen filmography. So many Coen characters commit to a course of action that dooms them, there’s often a god of the movie watching and punishing characters, and the heightened absurdity of violence is here when one of Macduff’s kids gets thrown off a balcony. Maybe Coen has always been motivated by Macbeth and maybe this adaptation was inevitable. Nothing wrong with borrowing from the best, as surely as future filmmakers will borrow from Joel and Ethan Coen. Who knows what this might’ve looked like if Ethan stuck around? As is, it’s one of the most incredible things either Coen has ever done. A
These are old cinematic traditions to bring to modern audiences, to say nothing of Shakespeare’s dialogue itself. Black and white cinematography, a compressed frame, hard to understand dialogue, spare production design, lots of tight close ups and silhouettes, all of that sounds like ingredients of a film that’s standoffish, if not impenetrable and cold. Instead, the opposite happens. The Tragedy of Macbeth is alive, as surely as Passion of Joan of Arc or Au Hasard Balthazar or First Reformed is alive. This is a story about agony and despair, about regret and shame, and it affected me on a raw level. Coen taps into unique scenarios embedded in Macbeth that other adapters might shift focus on or ignore altogether. The unpredictable danger of being subject to the whims of a deranged leader are as terrifying here as any horror film. The pain of being the messenger rings through, as characters are repeatedly shown to hold the keys to a crux in the recipient’s life that will hereafter separate it into before and after. Coen’s adaptation is a formal exercise that looks like homework to the average moviegoer, but the assignment is rich and larded with everything that makes film such a rewarding medium.
A career spent making great film after great film means that a director can just attract the most talented people to themselves, and so much of Tragedy of Macbeth is seeing various craftspeople as kings and queens of their respective hills. Delbonnel shoots the unquestioned best-looking film of 2021, and he does it in black and white that looks impossibly crisp. The use of shadow and light serve as their own barriers within the frame, further isolating or accentuating the characters. That being said, the production design of the various white marble castles lends itself to framing, as so much of it is sharp corners and clean surfaces. Macbeth sleeps on a slab without a pillow, and that tells me about all I need to know of his character. The score, by Coen regular collaborator Carter Burwell, is sparse but effective alongside a top-notch sound design that emphasizes the knocking that’s in Macbeth’s head and every strange sound the witches make.
With the construction and capturing of all this, the actors come in to elevate it further still. Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand can tick these required roles for great actors off their lists. He plays Macbeth before the murders as competent and assured, like a classic Denzel character, but his decompensation as his guilt devours him is something new and deranged that, at times, out-villains his role in Training Day. McDormand’s great accomplishment here is conveying the stress of holding down the fort, and watching herself fail to do so. There’s no coming back when your husband embarrasses himself like he does here, and these small changes in McDormand’s face bring that across. As Macduff, Corey Hawkins is revelatory. As great as they often are, Coen films rarely draw tears, and I never expected an adaptation of a known story to do so, but there’s Hawkins with his world-ending shock at hearing about his family’s fate. Alex Hassell, as the inscrutable Ross, is an actor I’ve never seen before, but his particular silhouette, with his tunic’s long sleeves, always served as the alert that I was about to spend a too-brief scene with a great actor. Lastly, Kathryn Hunter as the three witches gives the performance of the year, a physically indelible turn that’s calculated and considered at every step. A known quantity to me since she played Cleopatra’s body slave on HBO’s Rome, her distinctive husky voice and otherworldly motions are put to unforgettable use. I thought the throat-singing Sardaukar priest in Dune was going to be my most memorable vocal performance for 2021, and then Kathryn Hunter barfed up a finger.
The Tragedy of Macbeth even works as a coherent piece of Coen filmography. So many Coen characters commit to a course of action that dooms them, there’s often a god of the movie watching and punishing characters, and the heightened absurdity of violence is here when one of Macduff’s kids gets thrown off a balcony. Maybe Coen has always been motivated by Macbeth and maybe this adaptation was inevitable. Nothing wrong with borrowing from the best, as surely as future filmmakers will borrow from Joel and Ethan Coen. Who knows what this might’ve looked like if Ethan stuck around? As is, it’s one of the most incredible things either Coen has ever done. A
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