carter burwell

As a first-time solo director, Joel Coen takes a sparse, stylized look at one of Shakespeare’s most compelling plays. Filming in austere black-and-white, he presents an abstract physical world that’s filled with deep, geometric shadows, sharp angles and bleak walls, focusing on an ambitious middle-aged couple, determined to usurp political power in medieval Scotland.

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. The film was shot 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.