Tragic Thoughts

I've seen a lot of movies by the Coen brothers over the years -- far more than you'd expect for a person who hasn't generally liked their movies all that much. (Though True Grit was a notable exception. And now, in the aftermath of Hawkeye, I wonder how much that had to do with how talented Hailee Steinfeld is.)

Now along has come a significant departure. Joel Coen's newest movie was written and directed completely without the involvement of his brother Ethan. And it was adapted from a play by William Shakespeare: The Tragedy of Macbeth.

All presentations of Shakespeare on stage or screen come with at least three distinct challenges. First, a notable portion of the audience will not be seeing the story for the first time, having seen some past version of it that lingers in their minds. Second, Shakespeare's plays are generally rather long and are rarely presented without cuts; where the cuts are made plays a huge role in the shape of your adaptation. Three, despite the length of the full text, Shakespeare's plays are hyper-compressed in time and action; they can strain belief in how suddenly the events unfold, and negotiating the big emotional swings are a minefield for actors and a director. Joel Coen has made bold choices in this adaptation that impact all of these things.

To the first point, this version of Macbeth leans into classic film expectations of Shakespeare. It's made very much in homage to Laurence Olivier's Hamlet: filmed in stark and moody black-and-white, with an old school 4:3 aspect ratio. The sets are large and certainly aren't cheap... but they also never truly try to make you believe that they're not sets. The feeling of this movie is one of watching a stage production of the play -- one with some tricks that would be beyond the reach of live theater, but with artificiality on display nonetheless.

To the second point, this is an incredibly slimmed-down text. I've seen Macbeth on stage before -- and it ran two-and-a-half hours (not even counting an intermission). This film is a tight hour-forty-five, including the credits, suggesting that as much as a third of the original text has been excised in this adaptation. (But it's not like I was following along with a copy of the play to track.) If you have it in your head that Shakespeare is slow and plodding, know that this adaptation is brisk indeed.

To the third point, negotiating the rapidly growing ambition of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, you have Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand. Both give excellent performances. Their brilliance here is that they often feel like they're giving a fresh take on the words without feeling like they're struggling to find a new adaptation. As much as it's possible to feel natural when speaking such heightened poetry, they pull it off. Washington handles some great fight choreography with aplomb. McDormand negotiates her character's descent into insanity with great skill.

And at the same time... I daresay both of them are very miscast.

I mentioned that each Shakespearean play strains disbelief in its own way. With Macbeth, the issue is in how quickly and completely the two main characters give into their ambition and bloodlust. Lady Macbeth is cold and calculating from the start, while Macbeth is initially reluctant to start down his murderous path. But soon the bodies are piling up, and for a while both revel in psychopathic glee at their body count. The beast that's always been inside them has been unleashed to devastate all of Scotland.

Therein lies the problem in casting Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand: both feel too old for these roles. As good as they both are, they call into question how long the Macbeths could have possibly contained such murderous ambition. If the characters were both 30-somethings (as the text implies in talk of parenting children), you could imagine these psychopaths holding back their darker urges until now. In this version, with both in their 60s, it's impossible to conceive that they would not have given into their darker instincts long before this. It magnifies the "problem" at the core of this particular Shakespearean play.

Joel Coen's adaptation does try to shore up that issue by amplifying the supernatural elements of the play. The famous witches are made especially mysterious with a wild performance by Kathryn Hunter, and given a further tweak by an interesting and sinister treatment of the minor character of Ross, played by Alex Hassell. Then, creative takes on the "dagger of the mind" speech, the "ghost comes to dinner" scene, and both scenes of the witches' prophecies... all combine to make sure there's really not a dull moment in this movie version.

But overall, I think I'd give it a B. It's worthwhile, but not must-see. The cast is great, but it's not the best take on Macbeth that I personally have seen. And the arty use of black-and-white and artificial scenery feels to me like it will keep it from having much crossover potential with an audience who hasn't seen a Macbeth before. Perhaps this is for Coen brothers fans curious what the "single brother experience" might be like?