Macbeth, Stripped to Its Elements

W hen interviewed about his new movie The Tragedy of Macbeth, director Joel Coen explained that “movies are very much about where you’re looking, from where you’re looking, and how long you’re looking.” Compared with stage productions, moviemakers have far more control in directing an audience’s attention. Coen maximizes this in his stunningly simple production.

The Tragedy of Macbeth, adapted for screen from Shakespeare’s play, tells the story of political ambition gone wrong. Three witches (Kathryn Hunter) tell Macbeth (Denzel Washington), a well-respected general, that he will be king of Scotland. His wife, Lady Macbeth (Frances McDormand), then urges Macbeth to kill the king, which he does, becoming his paranoid successor. Macbeth then proceeds to lose everything: his sanity, his wife, his power, and his life.

The movie is shot entirely in black and white. Bleak Scottish landscapes are juxtaposed with angular sets and 2D backdrops. Remarkably, the film was shot exclusively on sound stages at the Warner Brothers Studio in California. The weather is mostly foggy, and crows appear throughout as an omen of impending doom. Clearly, the weather and landscape are projections of Macbeth’s confused mental state. We, the audience, are not always sure what is really happening and what is happening only inside Macbeth’s head.

Though the set and the costumes are remarkable, Coen’s greatest asset is — as always — his cast. Kathryn Hunter gives a brilliantly terrifying performance as the witches. Her voice is unnaturally deep, and her physical performance, body contortions and gestures, also seem otherworldly. She delivers her famously sinister lines — “finger of birth-strangled babe,” “double double toil and trouble, fire burn and cauldron bubble” — with captivating ease. Interestingly, Coen made the decision to have one main witch, with her two shadowy sisters — speaking in unison — appearing only in certain scenes. This, too, adds to the movie’s surrealism.

As you’d expect, Frances McDormand’s Lady Macbeth is brilliant. Her famous sleepwalking scene is suitably deranged. Lady Macbeth is perhaps the strongest of all Shakespeare’s female roles. She is as ruthless as she is evil, and her performance offers a master class in spousal manipulation. “Look like the innocent flower but be the serpent under it,” she tells her husband. She is also intensely practical. After the king’s murder, she tells Macbeth that “things without remedy should be without regard. What’s done is done.”

When Macbeth begins to lose his mind, seeing Banquo’s ghost (a man he murdered), his wife asks him “Are you a man?” He replies, “Aye, and a bold one, that dare look upon that which might appall the devil.” Macbeth is a story of corruption, about losing oneself in the pursuit of power. The real tragedy of Macbeth — one that McDormand and Washington bring to life — is that in getting what he wants, and by using the means that he does, he becomes a lesser man.