Director: Joel Coen
Starring: Denzel Washington, Frances McDormand, Alex Hassell, Bertie Carvel, Brendan Gleeson, Corey Hawkins, Harry Melling, Miles Anderson, Matt Helm, Moses Ingram, Kathryn Hunter, Stephen Root, James Udom
Distributor: Other
Runtime: 107 mins. Reviewed in Dec 2021
Reviewer: Fr Peter Malone msc

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Rating notes: Mature themes and violence

A re-telling of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, using an abridged text but including the essential scenes and lines, as well as striking imagery and black and white photography.

Shakespeare’s Macbeth is so well-known with many screen versions. Joel Coen’s The Tragedy of Macbeth is a welcome addition. As can be seen by the running time, 107 minutes, and Joel Coen deciding to add The Tragedy to the title, this is something of an abridged version of the play, going to the core of the drama and the characters.

While audiences are familiar with many of the passages, key and often-quoted lines, the interest is in the performances, of course, but also in how of the drama is staged and photographed. For most audiences who watch this version, there will be several revelations. The black-and-white photography and design is striking, to say the least. The sets are quite stylised and the exterior scenes eerie, especially the pool where the witches will appear, the bleak moors, and the forest of Burnham Wood. Watching the film is a constant excitement and delight.

While an abridged version of Shakespeare’s play, the familiar scenes are present, (even to the comedy of the Porter, Stephen Root). Washington is a powerful presence as Macbeth, initially pleasant, loyal to the king, flattered by his promotion. But, there is encounter with the three witches (imaginatively portrayed by Hunter, draped in black, arms akimbo, resembling the wings of the crows and ravens, harsh voice, aged androgynous, memorable). Doubts and possibilities are raised, and Macbeth discovers a lurking ambition. McDormand interprets Lady Macbeth with no redeeming qualities. She has stood by Macbeth and loved him, is ambitious for him, and, amorally, she has no scruples in orchestrating the murder of the King and blaming the guards.

Gleeson is Duncan while Melling is Malcolm. But, ever-present is a character that one might vaguely remember from reading the play or performances, the messenger, Ross. Coen has made him much more significant in this version – present at key moments, and a Machiavellian figure, ever treacherous, and finally sharing in Malcolm’s triumph. An interesting reading and performance of this character by Alex Hassell.

One of the other advantages of this version is that many of the speeches and soliloquies, with many close-ups, are spoken as the characters walk with energy along long corridors or ascend and descend staircases. Another advantage is the delivery of the well-known speeches in rather quieter tones, sometimes semi-conversational, and effective in their intimacy – confiding in the audience, rather than the rhetorical theatrical style in the Olivier vein.

Coen has laid out for us the development of Macbeth’s tragedy so that by the end, a man who had some morals becomes more and more guilt-ridden, seeing ghosts, argumentative and finally bellowing in madness as Burnham Wood approaches Dunsinane. (And, a commendation to how the Burnham Wood advance is handled, soldiers carrying branches, crowded, and Macbeth suddenly overwhelmed by gusting leaves as he opens a window to look on the advancing troops.)

And, with such a comparatively brief running time, one is tempted to watch it again.