Actors love Shakespeare because it gives them a chance to really show out; to chew up dialogue and staging and measure themselves against all the Great Actors that inhabited the roles throughout the craft’s history. That’s the key to Shakespeare adaptations; pick a few technically gifted actors, shake up the setting and framing just enough to make things interesting, and let the actors cook. The Tragedy of Macbeth leans into that formula and pushes past it, delivering a film more than worthy of its ancestral stage play.
Everyone knows the story of Macbeth, or at least its broad strokes, as it’s worked its way into countless stories, both explicitly and implicitly, through its centuries of existence. Three mysterious witches tell Macbeth (Denzel Washington), a Scottish lord, he will become the next King of Scotland, which sends Macbeth and his wife, Lady Macbeth (Frances McDormand) into a tailspin of ambition, greed, and madness.
Director Joel Coen takes that story, strips away all window dressing, and focuses on its bare and unyielding tenets. Every choice serves this distillation, most noticeably in the production design and cinematography. The Scottish castles are cold, stark, and angular, with little-to-no visible adornments, leaving almost nothing to distract the eye from the actors and their delivery. It’s also shot in black-and-white using a 4:3 aspect ratio. While sometimes those techniques can come off as gimmicky, they serve a real purpose here, namely to further drain the screen of figurative color and complement a claustrophobic tone, which in turns complements the main themes, including the cyclical inevitability of life.
Too, from a basic adaptation perspective, it deftly straddles film and stage. Everything is undoubtedly cinematic, yet simultaneously feels as if you’re sitting in the fourth row of a live performance. For example, the night sky ripples like a curtain filled with LED twinkle lights and literal spotlights shine down dramatically on monologuing characters. These things play like pure stagecraft, but cinematic moments also interlace this tangible backdrop, especially some of the more supernatural elements. It’s a bold choice that could have gone off the rails with sub-optimal execution but instead produces a fascinating, fresh experience.
Ultimately, none of those choices matter without the performances, and those don’t disappoint. Washington has exactly the sort of gravitas Macbeth craves (and not only thanks to the bright flecks of grey in his beard), and he bounces between quiet, intense ruminations on his actions and fate and fiery, blustery tirades with equal brilliance. McDormand injects a pathos into Lady Macbeth that isn’t typically there, and the choice to frame the central duo couple as an aging couple with no heirs and no options runs as much through her as it does Macbeth. And, of course, wonderful performances dot the rest of the cast, especially Kathryn Hunter, who instills all three witches with a perfect sense of foreboding import.
To be sure, this adaption will not work for everyone. Although altered to better fit this film (and to inject some breathing room for the acting), the dialogue is still definitively Shakespearean, a stumbling block some just won’t clear. That’s not meant as a dig, either. People don’t talk like that, and they haven’t talked like that for hundreds of years (if they ever did), so it’s naturally not engaging for plenty of people. Add to that the harshness of the production design, and it engenders barriers to entry that will lead some to tap out. Too, film adaptations of Macbeth typically lean into the action (as it includes some of the most ready-made set pieces in Shakespeare), but this one chooses not to, which will inevitably leave some cold. But for anyone for whom those aren’t dealbreakers, the sheer technical virtuosity on display is undeniable.
