I take my seat less than forty minutes after waking up. I am still chewing breakfast as the coffee I had no time to take at home lands on the side table just in time for the lights to dim. Just a few more souls scattered in the cinema, I casually notice. It’s a Monday morning after all, quite a treat to be here legs crossed in front of a screen.
Joel Coen’s take on Macbeth is paced by the leaden thumping of dense drops of water, wine, blood. Veering away from easy expectations, maybe the cliché, his elegant vision replaces the gore, the filth, the murk, with mist, clouds, and crows. The Tragedy of Macbeth exists in a surreal space between stage and set, and within the harsh lines of a near brutalist architecture somewhat reminiscent of Ken Russell’s The Devils or Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc.
Although at first sight I thought Denzel Washington too naturally charismatic for the role, my scepticism partly crumbled at his bravura slowly surfacing in Shakespearean waters. But it’s the two main female performances to have literally blown me away—Kathryn Hunter creepily contorting into the three witches, and of course Frances McDormand, a phenomenal Lady Macbeth carved in stone.