Review of The Tragedy of Macbeth

The Tragedy of Macbeth (2021) is the first film for Joel Coen to direct, write/adapt, and produce without his longtime collaborator and brother, Ethan. Together, the Coen brothers frequently have worked in adaptation, having in one way or another appropriated work by Homer, Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, William Rose, James M. Cain, Charles Portis, Cormac McCarthy, and even folk musician Dave Van Ronk. However, The Tragedy of Macbeth stands as the first time either of the brothers have turned to Shakespeare as a direct source. At first, Macbeth may seem an unlikely play for a Coen adaptation, as nearly all their movies contain some sort of comedic element, and Macbeth is widely known as perhaps Shakespeare’s least funny play, withstanding the Porter scene, played here wonderfully by longtime Coen collaborator Stephen Root. Yet the Coens long have had interest in men, like Jerry Lundegaard in Fargo (1996) or the Dude in The Big Lebowski (1998), who find themselves bumbling through an escalating situation in which they have no business being involved. Likewise, the Coens have explored evil as an unstoppable force in Raising Arizona (1987), Barton Fink (1991), No Country for Old Men (2007), and The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018). They also have contributed several crime stories, such as Blood Simple (1984), Miller’s Crossing (1990), Fargo (1996), and The Man Who Wasn’t There (2001). In these ways and more, Macbeth, a play about a warrior’s encounter with inexorable evil, the fated path and power struggles that such an encounter puts into place, and the implementation of a crime that absolutely goes wrong, seems ripe for adaptation into a Coen film.

Working with cinematographer Bruno Delbonnel, Coen’s Macbeth conceptually can be categorized as noir, surrealism, or German expressionism. The low key, black-and-white photography starkly adds a depth and texture to the film’s poetry that colors might otherwise overpower. In so doing, the film recalls Trevor Nunn’s shadowy 1979 filmed version of his Royal Shakespeare Company production, with its embrace of a low key aesthetic as well as its use of a sound stage that amplifies the play’s psychological realism. For Coen, though, the lack of color abstracts the film, as it distances viewers from the play. In various interviews, Coen mentioned that other than one dress of Lady Macbeth’s, there was no color even on the set, a costuming decision likewise seen in Nunn’s production, where all the characters were dressed in black or white. Further, many of the shadows in the Coen production are painted onto the set itself, thereby permitting the actors physically to inhabit this aesthetic. The film’s sharp, high contrast lighting is more reminiscent of concerts or theatre than of film, often so abstract that at times it was difficult to know if the scene was set at night or during the day, a confusion likely shared by the Macbeths.

The highly stylized set pieces remind viewers that Macbeth began as a play and everything they see is a set, despite the film being deeply cinematic. Great are the geometric shapes. Vertical cylinders, triangles, solid edges, cones, and rectangles all add to the tension captured on the narrowed frame (1.37:1 ratio). Coen has stripped the movie of virtually all elements of realism. Gone are the rented castles, Medieval caparisoned horses, and muddy courtyards, and there is very little furniture in this home. In their place is a hyper-imagined, architectural space. As is typical of German expressionism, the film’s composition magnifies themes of betrayal, insanity, disorientation, and inner distortion, all of which is common for a post-World War I culture and found again here in Macbeth’s own post-war experiences. Every image demands analysis.

Further, Coen strips the play down to its poetic rhythms, whereby for long moments throughout the middle third of the film, the action and the dialogue match the literal knocking of the Porter’s door. This constant, taut pattern of thumping commences in the scene where audiences witness Macbeth walking to Duncan’s quarters to murder the king, and it intensifies when he plunges his dagger into Duncan’s throat, a scene not depicted in Shakespeare but included also in Justin Kurzel’s recent Macbeth (2015). The stabbing continues the rhythmic knocking, photographed as being in tune with Duncan’s blood dripping on the floor, water overflowing from a sink, a bell ringing from a tower, and doors slamming shut, all of which provide a poetic rhythm to the film that creates a movement sustained throughout the narrative.

The casting choices further speak to some of the overarching ideas of the film. Having performed in numerus Shakespeare plays throughout his career, Denzel Washington plays the titular character for the first time. Meanwhile, Francis McDormand returns as Lady Macbeth, a character she has played twice before (at ages 14 and 56) in her career. Both actors were in their early-to-mid 60s during production, despite Macbeth and Lady Macbeth rarely thought of as being amongst Shakespeare’s older characters. Washington and McDormand are even a few years older than Christopher Plummer and Glenda Jackson’s in the version directed by Kenneth Frankel and Zoe Caldewell for Broadway in 1988. The impact is immense. Instead of a play about a young and ambitious couple too eagerly wanting to advance their careers, the dynamic here is of a senior couple recognizing this opportunity not only as their last possibility for the crown but also their last shot at purpose, perhaps even their last occasion for thrills, all of which philosophically registers in films such as Raising Arizona (1987), No Country for Old Men (2007), Burn After Reading (2008), and True Grit (2010), among others.

This dynamic is especially relevant in 1.7, as the couple discusses Duncan’s murder. Viewers see a long married, senior couple who are without children, who either are not cursed with the burden of children and can be entirely career-focused or are deeply burdened with the regret and anger of having not had children. Either way, Coen emphasizes this new complexity into their relationship. Further, while Coen removed, rearranged, or reassigned lines (more on the latter in a moment), only in this scene did he change a line. In the text, Macbeth famously states, “Bring forth men children only! / For thy undaunted mettle should compose / Nothing but males” (1.7.72-74). In the film, Coen changes the tense: “For thy undaunted mettle should have composed / Nothing but males” (26:37). Washington and McDormand depict the love shared between the Macbeths, yet Macbeth speaking of the male children Lady Macbeth should have produced accentuates the potential tension, however much unstated, that comes between a husband who could physiologically still produce an heir and a post-menopausal wife who is beyond child-bearing years. Macbeth has remained with Lady Macbeth, despite her not having fulfilled her political obligation by way of children, which of courses speaks to Macbeth’s orchestrating the murder of Fleance and Young Macduff. The change in tense also challenges traditional, psychoanalytical understandings of Macbeth’s reference to his “barren scepter” by suggesting, at least according to Washington’s Macbeth, that Lady Macbeth is to blame. Either way, the casting and this shift in tense offers viewers an original Macbeth couple, and the 1.37:1 ratio and numerous tightly framed close ups of the intense faces of these intense actors bring great drama to their scenes.

A third hugely influential casting decision that will receive much critical attention in the future is Kathryn Hunter as the Witch(es) and the Old Man. Those familiar with contemporary English theatre likely will recognize Hunter as an acclaimed physical performer, contortionist, and the first woman to play King Lear in 1997 at the Leicester Haymarket and Young Vic in 1997 and again in 2022 at the Globe Theatre. Viewers first hear Hunter’s remarkably chilling voice work during the opening scene. There exists only her voice(s) as the three Witch(es) and the single word “WHEN” in white font against a black background, a bell clanging in the background that introduces the rhythmic patterns discussed earlier. Her immense abilities as a physical actor, however, are on full display in 1.3 when her character(s) first meets Macbeth. The scene transitions from Duncan having learned of Macbeth’s heroics on the battlefield in 1.2. Duncan looks up, and the camera cuts to three ravens circling in the sky, so viewers think. But as the camera zooms in on the birds and through a cloudy grey, audiences recognize that they instead are looking down at birds circling in the sky, birds that then disappear into a fog just as Hunter’s Witch(es) is depicted.

Hunter as a single Witch begins cawing and shaking her arms like a bird, the sound of ruffled feathers mixed over the squawking. She is costumed in a black coat that resembles a bird’s wings, and when Macbeth approaches the Witch(es), she/they appear as a single figure, though a reflection in a large puddle of water suggests there are two other Witches standing somewhere as well. Thus, a major motif is established for the film: the Witch exists as a single and a trio, both juxtaposed with birds. Ravens appear throughout the film whenever there is an evil moment, such as all scenes with the Witch(es), Macbeth’s murder of Duncan, and when Banquo’s ghost interrupts the banquet, as well as numerous other places in the film that signal a supernatural presence.

Also compelling about the Witch(es) is that Coen aligns Rosse (Alex Hassell) with the Witch(es), in turn connecting him to the evil so imbued in the play. Thus, Coen elevates Rosse’s character in ways that echo Roman Polanski’s Macbeth (1971). He is one part sinister and one park sexy. He adorns a raven-like cloak and a goatee. His eyes pierce through the camera, as he becomes an agent of evil (a favorite archetype of several Coen films) and a shadowy version of the Macbeths. As with Polanksi’s Rosse, he is Murderer #3, and after Murderers #1 and #2 kill Banquo, Rosse chases Fleance through a corn field in an added scene. Likewise, in the scene that follows Malcolm’s coronation, viewers see Rosse returning to the Old Man (also played by Hunter, with the same voice inflection used for Witch #1), paying him money, and then riding off screen on a horse with Fleance. Rosse and Fleance briefly disappear over a hill, only to reemerge having been replaced with hundreds of ravens that deliberately connect Rosse with the Witch(es). Such an ending suggests that the Witch(es), often working as Rosse, planned to control the monarchy by removing Duncan, Banquo, and Macbeth. The film also highly suggests that Rosse is responsible for Lady Macbeth’s death. Now, under the protection of the Witch(es) and/or Rosse, Fleance appears destined to fulfill the initial prophesy and begin a new chapter about the rise and fall of Scottish kings.

Every generation has a cinematic Macbeth: Welles’s Macbeth (1948) an eccentric personality, Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood (1957) a frenzied warrior, Polanski’s Macbeth (1971) a bloody pessimist, and Justin Kurzel’s Macbeth (2015) a traumatized veteran. For Coen, Macbeth is an aging soldier, who though still punished for his ambition, seems more like an Everyman desiring what a long career should have earned for him. Further, this Macbeth is less about politics, the history of the Scottish monarchy, or war. Rather, Coen’s Macbeth is a crime story. It is about a couple that near the end of their life fully recognize that it is now or never. Coen’s Macbeth has spent a career witnessing death on the battlefield while Lady Macbeth likely has witnessed a lifetime’s worth of still births. They have spent a lot of time apart suffering through these events without one another, and whereas a younger couple might now find the time to begin following their political ambitions, these Macbeths seize the moment to secure their legacy as a couple.