The movie
The Tragedy of Macbeth
Coen and his team have created images it is impossible to banish from the memory. The diaphanous white fog, the cawing black birds, the witch who looks like a depraved Joan of Arc—it all has the entranced clarity of a nightmare.
Length: 105 min
Country: United States of America
Language spoken: English
Language subtitles: Dutch
Cast: Denzel Washington, Frances McDormand, Moses Ingram, Brendan Gleeson, Kathryn Hunter, Harry Melling, Corey Hawkins, Sean Patrick Thomas, Alex Hassell, Ralph Ineson
Director: Joel Coen
Release date: 2021
Description
In his first film without his brother Ethan, Joel Coen creates an immersive and nightmarish black-and-white world that serves as the perfect setting for Shakespeare’s grand Scottish tragedy. Denzel Washington is the ambitious Thane of Cawdor, who—egged on by his craven, even more ambitious wife (a riveting Frances McDormand)—contemplates, and then does, the unthinkable: killing the King and usurping his crown. On par with the great acting are the cinematography of Bruno Delbonnel and the production designs of Stefan Dechant. Together, Coen and his team have created images it is impossible to banish from the memory.
‘Coen very much approaches the material as the visual obsessive he is. The diaphanous white fog, the cawing black birds, the witch who looks like a depraved Joan of Arc—it all has the entranced clarity of a nightmare. The surprise, at least to me (and I say this as a true believer in the Coen brothers’ aesthetic, even though I only like about half their films), is how sensual and ingenious and expressive and enveloping the film’s images are.’—Owen Gleiberman, Variety
‘Coen very much approaches the material as the visual obsessive he is. The diaphanous white fog, the cawing black birds, the witch who looks like a depraved Joan of Arc—it all has the entranced clarity of a nightmare. The surprise, at least to me (and I say this as a true believer in the Coen brothers’ aesthetic, even though I only like about half their films), is how sensual and ingenious and expressive and enveloping the film’s images are.’—Owen Gleiberman, Variety
