The Tragedy of Macbeth (2021)
“By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes.” – Witch.
The Tragedy of Macbeth (2021)
Directed by: Joel Coen
Written by: William Shakespeare (story), Joel Coen (screenplay)
Starring: Denzel Washington, Frances McDormand, Alex Hassell
Joel Coen hasn’t created this as a ‘Shakespeare for dummies.’ Instead, it’s a cinematic recreation of the stage production, relying on performance and set pieces. In other words, your enjoyment of this film will be completely dependent on your knowledge of Shakespeare’s works and the themes embedded within them.
I personally ‘knew’ the story of Macbeth coming into this, which helped, but was so out of my depth when it came to the phrasing and anachronisms within the dialogue. This was occasionally fun, as Shakespearean language is so fruity and interesting to dissect (hey, I like words, what can I say?) but otherwise it made me feel like I was always a step behind the characters.
This extends to the acting as well – it is well documented that theatrical acting is astronomically different from cinematic acting. The actors have to be more expressive on a stage, more interactive with the audience; rehearsed…but malleable. Therefore many actors claim that theatre acting is the ‘purest’ form of acting – the element of the craft that separates the good from the great. In fact, I’m reading Brian Cox’s autobiography at the moment, and the amount of shade he throws at ‘cinematic’ actors definitely encouraged me to check this out.
However, while Washington and McDormand were both fantastic (huge surprise…I know), I just haven’t seen enough stage performances to discern what qualifies as ‘truly brilliant’. For example, when I see Robert Pattinson portray Batman, I’ll be able to judge his performance against the handful of other Batman portrayals. I’ll have a baseline to contextualise it. Here, I was lacking that context. This imposter syndrome and my lack of Shakespeare knowledge tainted the experience for me, and I found myself focussing on the interesting set pieces instead of the dialogue.
If you’re a Shakespeare Stan you’ll probably love this. But I’m not, and therefore you should definitely take my rating with a grain of salt.
Rating: 6.5/10