Joel Coen opens his pet Shakespeare film with the cryptic title card: When.
It is the first word conjured in the play—and the film—by one of the weird sisters. No doubt it is isolated in text to pose a question to the audience, because a little more than halfway through, another title card appears, perhaps as an answer: Tomorrow. Just as “Who” is the first word of Hamlet—a play infamously shot through with existential questions—one is tempted to consider the potential of both the playwright’s and the filmmaker’s intentions. It is always here, at the start of every performance of Shakespeare, that it behooves any student of the Bard to contemplate the trifold context of history. Apropos of Macbeth in particular, we have the three witches to prompt us to explore this triple nexus in time.
Every play exists in three periods: when it was written, when it is meant to take place, and when it is performed. All of these play an equal part to inform the viewer of its significance. Macbeth was written and first performed in 1606—the same year as two other grand tragedies, Antony and Cleopatra and King Lear. It was famously a plague year (William endured and miraculously survived several of these) and a mere few years after King James of Scotland ascended the throne in England. The new King took the title James I of the tentatively titled “Britain” in hopes of some form of “Union” between the lands of England and Scotland (and Ireland and France). It was a tense time for the commonwealth because even though the transition from Elizabeth I was unexpectedly peaceful, “Union” was at best, a bemusing concept. It was personally tense for the aging William (an elderly 42) due to the fickle nature of patronizing sources and all the ensuing plague-induced playhouse shutdowns. But luckily, King James quickly dubbed Shakespeare’s Globe company The King’s Men, and they were immediately hired to produce as many plays as the King saw fit for his numerous courtly entertainments. Given James’ Scottish heritage and his penchant for the occult and hunting witches, Macbeth was soon written with the King’s well-known interests in mind.
Macbeth’s story is set in the eleventh century in Scotland, a period marked by many power struggles amongst the rival clans and outside invaders. Shakespeare essentially condenses the action of a century of fighting into a relatively simple plot flooded with assassinations, battles, and blood. His audience at The Globe would expect as much, since their only image of Scottish people was as war-mongering outsiders, and poor ones at that. But the shrewd Shakespeare made sure to portray the new King’s ancestors as brave and skilled soldiers, whose loyalty could only be swayed by a force so heinous—witchcraft—one could not blame them entirely for their downfall.
In the US, Macbeth enjoys a place on a list of what acclaimed scholar James Shapiro calls a “mini-canon” of Shakespeare plays most frequently-performed this side of the pond, which tend to include Romeo and Juliet, Midsummer Night’s Dream, Twelfth Night, Julius Caesar, Hamlet, Much Ado About Nothing, As You Like it, Taming of the Shrew, and The Tempest. It is no wonder that a new filmed version of Macbeth, whose themes are rooted in division and the uncertainty of leadership, would prove a vital and revelatory a piece of work at this moment in our history. Macbeth has long been a favorite political sandbox (as is Julius Caesar) for American audiences. During the Civil War, for example, President Lincoln (huge Shakespeare geek) often recited from memory tracts from Macbeth and other plays while weighing decisions of state with those closest to him. His would-be assassin, the prominent stage actor John Wilkes Booth, was also an astute student of Shakespeare, but, in a turn illustrating the general appeal of the Bard to citizens of all political leanings, he interpreted the words of Shakespeare’s plays in an opposing light.
There is no dearth of Macbeths in cinema history, as there appears no limit to its lure amongst filmmakers from all corners of the world. Vishal Bhardwaj (Bollywood’s Bard nerd) made a vivid present-day version, Maqbool (2003), and Roman Polanski went on location in Northumberland to direct a gruesome Macbeth (1971) on the heels of the horrific murder of his pregnant wife Sharon Tate. One of the best is Akira Kurosawa’s Noh-theatre-inspired Throne of Blood (1957), which was simmering in the Japanese director’s mind for years before even Orson Welles’ dark and gritty adaptation was released in 1948. There are plenty more, but it was Orson Welles’ production that so obviously inspired Coen’s vision for this latest interpretation of the accursed play.
Enter The Tragedy of Macbeth, a story so disruptive that it even managed to divide the Coen Brothers’ interests. After decades of co-creating brilliant collaborations, this film marks the first time the uber-talented duo have parted ways on a film project. Ethan, apparently, was just not in the mood to make a movie at the time his older bro Joel spearheaded this one, preferring to busy himself with other projects like stage plays. (I mean, you do have to be in a certain mood for Macbeth, honestly, so… you do you, Ethan. We still love you.)
It seems the film emerges from the gauzy white fog of the universe’s cosmic background noise, a tale suddenly manifested by the disembodied voice of Kathryn Hunter’s singular witch, who eerily portrays all three of the iconic sisters. No stranger to Shakespeare, and renowned for her daring physicality in numerous stage performances (including her own Richard III), Hunter presages the strange and twisted nature of this play with bodily contortions that would make anyone squirm in their seat. It’s her unnerving voice and presence in only a handful of scenes that perfectly weaves a persistent sense of dread through the entire film.
Macbeth himself floats out of the mist, but one cannot ignore that the intimidating image of Denzel Washington in well-worn leather general’s regalia immediately establishes his existence as far more earthly and concrete, an anchor in some semblance of reality. Frances McDormand’s Lady M first appears walking in and out of velvety shadows, carrying paper and fire and smirking at the very stars that wrap around King Duncan’s shoulders. Brendan Gleeson brings just the right amount of gravitas and likability to this short-lived character, lending even greater tragedy to the “deep damnation of his taking off.”
The Coens are well-known for storyboarding to the hilt, and no doubt Joel and his cinematographer Bruno Delbonnel had a creative field day with the power of framing every single scene with perfect precision against the blank canvas of their studio sets. The stark, often disorienting shapes and Deutsch angles created with the mere texture of light are evocative of early films by German Expressionist masters like Fritz Lang and F.W. Murnau, whose work also influenced Welles. Indeed, Macbeth, steeped in otherworldly themes, feels all but in its natural environment when invoked within such ethereal constraints.
The clean minimalism thrusts the performances to the fore, and no one disappoints. It’s a truism that the Macbeths are probably the only successful marriage in all of Shakespeare, and usually—accurately—they are portrayed with verve and an urgent sexual chemistry that can be thrilling when actors are well cast. I will never forget how rare a privilege it was to have caught a performance of the 2013 National Theatre Live production of Macbeth starring Sir Kenneth Branagh and Alex Kingston, whose passionate incarnation of this most infamous of stage couples crackled with a delicious tension. But in this case, both Denzel and Frances show us a more aged, more stately pair than appear in most past productions. They feel like old business partners, civilly negotiating how to proceed with their latest promotions and acquisitions. This sober, even-handed behavior in the former half of the film then makes their latter madness all the more jarring.
Corey Hawkins and Moses Ingram, as Macduff and his wife, achieve cinematic magic by conjuring their chemistry without ever sharing a scene together. It is obvious from what little we see of them that they had a close relationship. Both Macduffs endure the most heartbreaking and terrifying moments in the play, and in Hawkins and Ingram, this film finds its most grounded reality by showcasing the effect of unchecked, violent ambition on innocent bystanders. One may measure an actor by how he conveys Macduff’s most wrenching lines: “All my pretty chickens and their dam… at one fell swoop?” It’s an abruptly tender sentiment that must be spoken with pain and anger and vulnerability all at once, and Hawkins delivers.
In grand Shakespearean fashion, Joel even casts a reliable repertory clown—the pitch-perfect Stephen Root—as The Porter. It’s a role as memorable as it is fleeting, serving up the only true laughs in the whole dirge of a story.
Macbeth can’t help its darkness—it’s always been a psychological whirlwind and a moral torture to experience. But when it’s thrice rooted in its times, it’s also exhilarating. The moment, for me, when this film lands in the 2020s is when Denzel enacts the “brief candle” speech in the last act. “Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow/creeps in this petty pace from day to day/to the last syllable of recorded time…” Those timeless words, dripped out in their simple iambs as he languidly steps down a steep, shadowed stair toward his dead wife, ossify in the air and lodge in our lungs. For what better describes the depth of despairing doubt we all felt—and still feel—during our modern-day plague? Denzel is wracked and wretched as he descends, and the only thought still clinging to his compromised mind is a cryptic prophesy from the mist that complicates itself as time unfolds and fair and foul portents swirl around him in triplicate… and Macbeth is all of us.
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