THE TRAGEDY OF MACBETH – Review by T. J. Callahan

Director Joel Coen goes solo as helmer for the first time with a stripped down version of Shakespeare in The Tragedy of Macbeth, starring his Oscar winning wife, Frances McDormand, and fellow Oscar winner, Denzel Washington as the Lady and Lord of the castle. This is still the classic tale of the want-to-be Scottish King as it is told cinematically with black and white film capturing the strong images presented as a realm of the muted values of stark sets. The dialogue may as well have been muted too because I didn’t understand a word the actors were saying. I don’t speak Shakespeare. The real Tragedy of this Macbeth is that there were no subtitles.

Coen shot the film in just 36 days — in much the same way the Bard might have done it with all of the action filmed completely on a sound stage — but Coen was still able to fully convey the bleak tension and disquiet of the times through dramatic lighting that cast deep and ominous shadows, and through the film’s eerie and deeply discomforting score by Carter Burwell.

If only the Thane’s reign
were better explained,
listening wouldn’t
have been so strained
and I wouldn’t complain.
Double, double toil and trouble;
Following this Tragedy of Mabeth
was quite the struggle.

See The Tragedy of Macbeth in select theaters and on Apple TV starting on January 14th