the tragedy of macbeth movie review

The Tragedy of Macbeth

My high school senior year English teacher, Mr. Kilinski would be proud that I remembered every single stanza and line from Macbeth  he made his students memorize. As Denzel Washington , Frances McDormand , and others worked through the Bard’s words as adapted by director Joel Coen , I felt myself lip-syncing under my mask. I covered the greatest hits, and lines I didn’t even realize I knew. Keep in mind that I learned these words 35 years ago, yet they were as fresh in my mind as if I’d committed them to memory that morning. The Scottish Play holds a special place in my heart, because it forced me to do a complete 180 on William Shakespeare . After my freshman year run-in with Romeo and Juliet  and my sophomore year’s Julius Caesar , I was through with this dude and his fancy writing about topics that put my adolescent self to sleep.

Macbeth  made me reconsider. Back then, I couldn’t put my finger on why it spoke to me so powerfully that it made me want to read more Shakespeare. But, as an adult, I understood. This play is like a film noir and I was a budding noirista as a teen. “The Tragedy of Macbeth” visually leans into my noirish interpretation. It’s shot in silvery, at times gothic black and white by Bruno Delbonnel , has a moody score by the great Carter Burwell , and takes place on incredible (and obviously fake) sets designed by Stefan Dechant . It also has more fog than San Francisco, the setting for so many great noirs. This makes sense, as Coen and his brother Ethan visited neo-noir’s genre neighborhood more traditionally in their 2001 film, “ The Man Who Wasn’t There .” One might consider their debut, “ Blood Simple ” a neo-noir as well.

Like those films, this one also features McDormand as a shady lady, namely Lady Macbeth. She’s married to Washington’s Macbeth, the Thane of Glamis. As the casting indicates, this couple is older than the one the Bard envisioned, which changes one’s perception of their motivations. Youthful ambition has given way to something else; perhaps the couple is way too conscious of all those yesterdays that “lighted fools/The way to dusty death.” At the Q&A after the free IMAX screening of this film, McDormand mentioned that she wanted to portray the Macbeths as a couple who chose not to have children early on, and were fine with the choice. This detail makes the murder of Macduff’s ( Corey Hawkins ) son all the more heartless and brutal, an act Coen treats with restraint but does not shy away from depicting.

Since The Scottish Play was first performed 415 years ago, all spoiler warnings have expired. Besides, you should know the plot already. Banquo ( Bertie Carvel ) and the Thane of Glamis meet three witches (all played by theater vet Kathryn Hunter ) on his way back from battle. They prophesize that Macbeth will eventually be King of Scotland. But first, he’ll become the Thane of Cawdor. When that part of the prediction becomes true, Macbeth thinks these medieval Miss Cleos might be onto something. Though he believes chance will crown him without his stir, Lady Macbeth goads him to intervene. As is typical of Shakespeare’s tragedies, the stage will be littered with dead bodies by the final curtain, each of whom will have screamed out “I am slain!” or “I am dead!” before expiring. Coen leaves that feature out of the movie, as you can see quite graphically how dead the bodies get on the screen.

King Duncan’s murder is especially rough. Washington and Brendan Gleeson play it as a macabre dance, framed so tightly that we feel the intimacy of how close one must be to stab another. It’s almost sexual. Both actors give off a regal air in their other scenes, though Washington’s is buoyed by that patented Den-ZELLL swagger. He even does the Denzel vocal tic, that “huh” he’s famous for, in some of his speeches, making me giddy enough to jump out of my skin with joy. Gleeson brings the Old Vic to his brief performance; every line and every moment feels like he’s communing with the ghosts of the famous actors who graced that hallowed London stage.

The other actors are well cast and bring their own gifts to their work. Stephen Root almost walks off with the picture as Porter. Alex Hassel gets more to do as Ross than I remembered. And there’s a great scene with an old man played by an actor I will not reveal. (Look real closely when he appears.) As for McDormand, she has her usual steely reserve, but I don’t think she fully shakes that off once we get to that “out, damned spot” scene. I had a similar problem with Washington’s scene at the banquet when he is haunted by a familiar specter. Both seem too confident to be in the thrall of temporary madness.

This “Macbeth” is as much about mood as it is about verse. The visuals acknowledge this, pulling us into the action as if we were seeing it on stage. But nowhere is the evocation of mood more prominent than in Kathryn Hunter’s revelatory performance as the Witches. There’s an otherworldliness to her appearance and her voice, as if she came from a dark place Macbeth should fear. You will have a hard time forgetting her work. She’s fantastic here, and Coen’s depiction of her cauldron bubbling is a highlight, as is the narrow staging of Macbeth’s final battle. Hawkins holds his own against the behemoth that is Denzel Washington, and their swordplay is swift and nasty.

One note of caution: High school students who use movies instead of reading the play will, as always, continue to fail English class. If chance would have you pass, then chance would pass you without your stir. So read the play, kids! Your own personal Mr. Kilinski will thank you.

Now playing in select theaters and available on Apple TV+ on January 14.

Odie Henderson

Odie “Odienator” Henderson has spent over 33 years working in Information Technology. He runs the blogs Big Media Vandalism and Tales of Odienary Madness. Read his answers to our Movie Love Questionnaire  here .

• Denzel Washington as Macbeth
• Bertie Carvel as Banquo
• Frances McDormand as Lady Macbeth
• Alex Hassell as Ross
• Brendan Gleeson as Duncan
• Corey Hawkins as Macduff
• Harry Melling as Malcolm
• Miles Anderson as Lennox
• Matt Helm as Donalbain
• Stephen Root as Porter
• Sean Patrick Thomas as Monteith

Cinematographer

• Bruno Delbonnel
• Carter Burwell

Editor (as Reginald Jaynes)

• Lucian Johnston

Writer (based on the play by)

• William Shakespeare

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‘Tragedy of Macbeth’ Review: The Thane, Insane, Slays Mainly in Dunsinane

Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand play a toxic power couple in Joel Coen’s crackling adaptation of Shakespeare’s Scottish play.

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By A.O. Scott

The poet John Berryman wrote of “Macbeth” that “no other Shakespearean tragedy is so desolate, and this desolation is conveyed to us through the fantastic imagination of its hero.” The universe of the play — a haunted, violent patch of ground called Scotland — is as dark and scary as any place in literature or horror movies. This has less to do with the resident witches than with a wholesale inversion of moral order. “Fair is foul and foul is fair.” Trust is an invitation to treachery. Love can be a criminal pact or a motive for revenge. Power is untempered by mercy.

Macbeth himself, a nobleman who takes the Scottish throne after murdering the king he had bravely served, embodies this nihilism as he is destroyed by it. The evil he does — ordering the slaughter of innocents and the death of his closest comrade — is horrific even by the standard of Shakespeare’s tragedies. And yet, Berryman marvels, “he does not lose the audience’s or reader’s sympathy.” As Macbeth’s crimes escalate, his suffering increases and that fantastic imagination grows ever more complex and inventive. His inevitable death promises punishment for his transgressions and relief from his torment. It also can leave the audience feeling strangely bereft.

The director Joel Coen’s crackling, dagger-sharp screen adaptation of the play — called by its full title, “The Tragedy of Macbeth” — conjures a landscape of appropriate desolation, a world of deep shadows and stark negative space. People wander in empty stone corridors or across blasted heaths, surveyed at crooked angles or from above to emphasize their alienation from one another. The strings of Carter Burwell’s score sometimes sound like birds of prey, and literal crows disrupt the somber, boxy frames with bursts of nightmarish cacophony.

For filmmakers, Shakespeare can be both a challenge and a crutch. If the images upstage the words, you’ve failed. But building a cinematic space in which the language can breathe — in which both the archaic strangeness and the timelessness of the poetry come to life — demands a measure of audacity. Coen’s black-and-white compositions (the cinematographer is Bruno Delbonnel) and stark, angular sets (the production designer is Stefan Dechant) gesture toward Orson Welles and Laurence Olivier, two of the 20th century’s great cinematic Shakespeareans. The effect is to emphasize the essential unreality of a play that has always been, in its own words, weird.

As many critics have noted, it is at the same time unnervingly acute in its grasp of human psychology. “Macbeth” is therefore a quintessential actor’s play, even if actors are famously superstitious about uttering its name. And Coen’s version is, above all, a triumph of casting.

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Denzel washington and frances mcdormand in joel coen’s ‘the tragedy of macbeth’: film review | nyff 2021.

A first-rate cast and stunning craftsmanship bring surging vitality to Shakespeare’s political thriller about an ambitious couple whose murderous power grab sends them spiraling into madness.

By David Rooney

David Rooney

Chief Film Critic

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Furious and fleet, emotional and elemental, Joel Coen ’s stripped-down take on the Scottish play instantly secures its place among the most audacious modern screen adaptations of Shakespeare. The extended title makes sense, given that Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand , leading a superlative ensemble, play not just the ruthless thirst for power but also the anxious race against time to seize their place in history, instead sealing their self-destruction. The Tragedy of Macbeth is a raw, lucid retelling, rendered spellbinding by its enveloping stylized design and its masterful black-and-white visuals, evoking the chiaroscuro textures of Carl Theodor Dreyer.

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That latter aspect makes French cinematographer Bruno Delbonnel as indispensable a collaborator to Coen as his fine actors, with the otherworldly plot elements of superstition, dark magic and compressed time embedded into the aesthetic fiber of the film. But the same could be said of production designer Stefan Dechant, who has created a Scottish landscape of the dissembling mind on Los Angeles soundstages, with stark exteriors and cold, forbidding castles that recall the geometric architecture in the metaphysical paintings of Giorgio de Chirico, their long, deep shadows threatening to engulf the characters.

The Tragedy of Macbeth

Venue : New York Film Festival (Main Slate, Opening Night) Release date : Saturday, Dec. 25 Cast : Denzel Washington, Frances McDormand, Alex Hassell, Bertie Carvel, Brendan Gleeson, Corey Hawkins, Harry Melling, Moses Ingram, Kathryn Hunter Director-screenwriter : Joel Coen, based on the play by William Shakespeare

Following its premiere as the opening-night gala of the 59th New York Film Festival , the film opens Dec. 25 through A24 , ahead of its streaming bow Jan. 14 on Apple TV+ . This is a work, however, that greatly repays the theatrical experience, not just with its mesmerizing imagery, but also with its gut-churning sound design and powerful use of Carter Burwell’s suspenseful score, full of thundering percussion and insidious strings.

Justin Kurzel’s 2015 Macbeth , with Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard, focused so much attention on the text’s visceral physicality that the complex internal rhythms of each scene and the brutal beauty of the language were often lost in a mumbly dirge that only really came alive on the battlefield. Coen, by contrast, leans into the theatricality with his abstract visual presentation while ensuring an excitingly cinematic reading by whittling each scene down to its intimate psychological essence.

Casting Washington and McDormand, two actors in their mid-60s, adds urgency to their characters’ stakes, for a start. Their chances of producing an heir are behind them — with an oblique but sorrowful reference to the loss of at least one child — and Macbeth’s days of glory in battle must surely be slowing down, even if the film opens with his triumph, fresh from crushing a rebellion against King Duncan (Brendan Gleeson). But when his valor earns him a promotion to Thane of Cawdor, he immediately sets his sights on higher office, a goal planted in his head by the three witches. Or perhaps it was already there, festering.

In that first encounter, Coen dips into a horror vibe that’s very much in line with the A24 stamp of filmmakers like Robert Eggers. All three of the “weird sisters” are played by the brilliant British theater actress and director Kathryn Hunter, who uses her diminutive physique like a rubber-limbed contortionist and her graveyard rumble of a voice like a sorceress. Confronting Macbeth and his trusted comrade Banquo (Bertie Carvel) on their homeward path across the fogbound Scottish moors, as ravens circle and swoop overhead, this birdlike yet far from fragile figure is mirrored by two reflections in a pond, speaking in unison with her until they gradually become three separate entities. When they address Macbeth as “King hereafter,” he listens.

Back at the castle, McDormand’s Lady Macbeth eagerly consumes this prophesy in a letter that she burns and sends flaming into the night sky. When she calls upon the spirits to “unsex me,” there’s an erotic charge to McDormand’s delivery, as if she’s inviting an unseen lover to remove the shackles of her gender and fill her with “direst cruelty.”

Washington brings a thoughtful gravitas to his role, so when Lady Macbeth hatches the regicide plot, he’s hesitant at first. Incensed over the King’s seemingly feckless son Malcolm (Harry Melling) being named Prince of Cumberland and placed next in line for the throne, Macbeth capitulates to his wife’s wishes. But still he requires convincing, even if that means talking himself into it. The death of Duncan is swift, bloody and shocking, and the plot accelerates from that point on, as the Macbeths’ naked ambition keeps upping the body count.

While McDormand initially becomes steelier — memorably fainting into Washington’s arms at news of the murder to which she’s been an accomplice, but never dimming her laser focus — Washington’s Macbeth begins unraveling almost immediately. No sooner has he ascended to the throne than he grows fearful and impulsive in his desperation to hold onto it, removing anyone in his way.

Many actors have played Macbeth as a tyrant; others as a weak man enfeebled by blind ambition and controlled by a manipulative wife. Washington digs into the interiority of the character, making him vulnerable above all to the doubts that cloud his own mind, and his pact with Lady Macbeth is one of equals, grasping for power while they still have time. The film doesn’t try to sympathize with the couple, nor make them into victims of a society that rewards strongman leaders. But it does locate the tragic dimension in them setting something fatalistic in motion that they can’t stop.

Every death carried out on Macbeth’s orders inflicts psychological violence back on him, and eventually on Lady Macbeth as she watches her husband and king lose his grip. The heavy toll starts with Banquo, whose blood has barely stopped flowing when his ghost manifests in an unsettling scene at a royal banquet, accompanied by the squawking ravens that Coen uses like a Hitchockian motif.

Macbeth’s instability intensifies with the reappearance of the witches, sharing more cryptic prophesies that give him false confidence. But he also grows more rash in his actions. When the Scottish lord Macduff ( Corey Hawkins ) flees to England to join the fugitive Malcolm, Macbeth takes revenge by ordering the killing of his wife (Moses Ingram), children and servants. Carried out in a castle on the edge of a lonely promontory, this is a wrenching scene, as is the one that follows, in which Macduff learns of the murders and is gutted with grief. Coen’s restraint in intimating more violence than he generally shows is highly effective.

The propulsive nature of the storytelling builds to a crescendo and then breathes as the attention turns again to Lady Macbeth, broken by the treachery of which she’s been a part and sleepwalking in the courtyard, babbling about her complicity in the murders. “Unnatural deeds do breed unnatural troubles,” observes the doctor (Jefferson Mays). While Lady Macbeth’s progression from guilt and madness to suicide is usually played out offstage, McDormand takes us to the very edge of that final moment, all the more chillingly because we see clearly how it will happen but don’t witness the act itself.

The director’s trims to the text are quite seamless, tightening the pace without unduly sacrificing the verse. Even the frequently cut scene with the drunken porter remains in place, giving Stephen Root an amusingly showy moment as he rushes to admit Macduff, whose knocking at the castle gates booms like the gates of hell, even before news of Duncan’s assassination has broken.

The supporting cast across the board is outstanding, bringing authority and clarity to the language without ever falling into the declamatory trap. The always impressive Gleeson makes an indelible mark in his truncated screen time as the well-loved King; Hawkins continues to prove himself a uniquely magnetic actor with formidable backbone; Carvel brings noble integrity to Banquo; Melling upends initial impressions by making Malcolm a young man of substance; and rising star Ingram is heartbreakingly lovely in her brief scene as Lady Macduff. Hunter’s virtuoso vocal and physical work as the three witches is no less thrilling than her distinctive take on Puck in Julie Taymor’s wonderful A Midsummer Night’s Dream .

Perhaps the most surprising presence is Ross, a Scottish lord often lost in the shuffle of carnage and chaos who here takes on the compelling persona of a shrewd politician, ably playing both sides. Alex Hassell deftly teases out the ambiguity of his character’s loyalties, slinking about in a monastic tunic that clings to his slender hips like a knit dress on a supermodel.

Mary Zophres’ costumes throughout add visual interest, blurring the lines of the medieval setting in keeping with the abstraction elsewhere. The plaited leather of Macbeth’s armor, his quilted royal tunic and Lady Macbeth’s brocade gown are particular standouts.

This is Joel Coen’s first solo feature without his brother and regular co-director Ethan, so naturally the feel is different from everything else in the Coen brothers’ oeuvre. But there’s a thematically coherent throughline in the fascination with crime, retribution and the confusion that reigns in between.

The project was driven in large part by the director’s wife, McDormand, who, like Washington, has continued over the decades to return regularly to her stage roots. Both lead performances are among the best of the actors’ celebrated careers, fiercely driven yet underscored by haunting notes of desolation as they see the price of their folly. The film has occasional echoes of both Roman Polanski’s Macbeth and Akira Kurosawa’s adaptation, Throne of Blood . But it’s as contemporary as it is classical, hurtling toward grim finality with the same gale force that blows a torrent of leaves into the castle when Birnam Wood moves to Dunsinane Hill, as the witches warned.

Full credits

Venue: New York Film Festival (Main Slate, Opening Night) Distributor: A24/Apple TV+ Production companies: Apple Original Films, A24, IAC Films Cast: Denzel Washington, Frances McDormand, Alex Hassell, Bertie Carvel, Brendan Gleeson, Corey Hawkins, Harry Melling, Miles Anderson, Matt Helm, Moses Ingram, Kathryn Hunter, Scott Subiono, Brian Thompson, Lucas Barker, Stephen Root, Robert Gilbert, Ethan Hutchison, James Udom, Richard Short, Sean Patrick Thomas, Ralph Ineson, Jefferson Mays Director-screenwriter: Joel Coen, based on the play by William Shakespeare Producers: Joel Coen, Frances McDormand, Robert Graf Director of photography: Bruno Delbonnel Production designer: Stefan Dechant Costume designer: Mary Zophres Editors: Lucian Johnston, Reginald Jaynes Music: Carter Burwell Supervising sound editor: Skip Lievsay Visual effects supervisors: Alex Leme, Michael Huber Casting: Ellen Chenoweth

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‘The Tragedy of Macbeth’ Review: Denzel Washington Commands in Joel Coen’s Visually Transporting Shakespeare Movie

In his first solo outing, Joel Coen sets "Macbeth" in a ravishing old-movie world that envelops the audience, as Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand take a desperate stab at power.

By Owen Gleiberman

Owen Gleiberman

Chief Film Critic

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In the 18 feature films he has made with his brother Ethan, Joel Coen has proved himself, over and over again, to be as fetishistically visual a director as anyone from the independent film world of the last four decades. Wes Anderson might be a more extreme example, but even there it would be hard to imagine the Wes Anderson life-as-a-dollhouse school had it not been for the example of the Coen brothers: the obsession they’ve always had with rendering a story in meticulously organized images, with each shot framed just so, the sets designed almost like dioramas, the whole sense of camera placement and cutting and spatial dynamics creating a heightened graphic-novel approach that, for the Coens, often seems to be the main reason they’re making the movie. (The loony-tunes tale of “Barton Fink” evaporated from my mind a month after I’d seen it, but I can still remember what the movie looks like.)

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So it’s no surprise that in “ The Tragedy of Macbeth ,” an adaptation of the Shakespeare play that is Joel Coen’s first solo outing as a filmmaker (it will open the New York Film Festival tonight), 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.

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“The Tragedy of Macbeth” was shot in black-and-white in 1.19:1, the end-of-the-silent-era aspect ratio that gives you a frame that’s a nearly perfect square. And just as that shape evokes an older world of moviemaking, Coen’s images, created in collaboration with the cinematographer Bruno Delbonnel and the production designer Stefan Dechant, make you feel like you’re tripping — and I mean tripping — though some of the most succulent chapters of film history. You may think, “Okay, so what?” Even music-video hacks know how to rip iconic screen images out of context and toss them into the postmodern blender. But in “Macbeth,” Coen doesn’t just echo the look of old films. He echoes the atmosphere, the spirit beneath the look — the chiaroscuro psychology, with shadows dancing around castle sets that are like something out of a fairy tale, and looming, sealed-in spaces where a shaft of light can reflect a character’s state of being.

At different points, the look of “The Tragedy of Macbeth” will recall a silky foreboding film noir, a Val Lewton horror film, a Sirkian soap opera, the cloistered dreamscapes of Ingmar Bergman’s “The Seventh Seal” and Carl Theodor Dreyer’s “Ordet,” the fascist hellscape of Orson Welles’ “The Trial,” the hallowed glow of “The Chronicle of Anna Magdalene Bach,” the operatic catacombs of “Ivan the Terrible,” and Welles’ 1948 version of “Macbeth.” In their austere chessboard way, the images are beautiful — suitable for framing — but if the film were just a glorified coffee-table-book version of Shakespeare, there would be little reason to care. Coen uses the images to create a heightened cinematic feeling: the sensation of a “closed” movie universe — a film space that turns into a labyrinth of the mind, as well as a moral-emotional playground for the audience. In this case, a playground splashed with blood.

The sense that this “Macbeth” is taking place in covered spaces even when it’s set outside links it to the studio-system era; it also plants it in a hybrid realm right on the border between film and theater. The movie was shot on soundstages, which lends it a certain hermetic quality, but I found that a fascinating fit with Shakespeare, whose artifice tends to stand out too much to me in a natural setting. And the hypnotic stylization of Coen’s images allows him to stage the play with an intimacy that coaxes out its humanity.

You can, if you choose, view the character of Macbeth as a man whose ambition turns him into a monster, but Denzel Washington , with close-cropped silver-flecked hair that seems to merge with the film’s design, plays him as an outwardly gregarious corporate weasel, all too relatable in a slightly crestfallen middle-aged way. Washington, as an actor, has always been a bit of a declaimer; he hardly needs Shakespeare to show that side of himself. In “The Tragedy of Macbeth,” though, he dials himself down, finding a softer, more furtive spirit in the inner worm of Macbeth’s malevolence. This is a movie in which two characters, Macbeth and Lady Macbeth ( Frances McDormand ), attempt to turn themselves into sociopaths, and part of the tragedy is that they fail.

When the witches, led by the scary performance of Kathryn Hunter, prophesize that Macbeth, returning in triumph from the war against Norway and Ireland, will become the Thane of Cawdor, and he does, it plants a seed in him: Surely their other prophecy — that he’ll be king — will now come true as well. Meeting Duncan (Brendan Gleeson), the King of Scotland, in a tent, we see the first hint of covetousness in Macbeth; it’s there in Washington’s pained smile when Duncan announces that his son, Malcolm (Harry Melling), will be the next king. But Washington, who has mastered the all-too-rare art of delivering Shakespeare as if it were conversational speech, keeps Macbeth’s desires under heavy wraps. It’s Lady Macbeth, having made a kind of pact with the devil, who nudges him to murder — and when he walks along an endless corridor, speaking of the dagger he sees before him, the scene has a sense of vertigo. When his dagger rips into Duncan’s neck, we feel him going through the looking glass.

Washington’s Macbeth isn’t a good sociopath; he flails and tries too hard. His murder of the two guards who’ve been set up to look like Duncan’s killers is an act of rash anxiety. Staring up at him in silent recrimination from below, McDormand’s Lady Macbeth can’t believe what a mistake it is. It’s not hard to see why Banquo’s ghost comes to visit Macbeth in the middle of a dinner: Bertie Carvel imbues Banquo with a camaraderie that’s warm and true, making his killing a grotesque act. That ghost is Macbeth’s guilt. Even here, Washington gives Macbeth a quality of vulnerability as he grows more desperate in covering his tracks. It’s frightening how familiar his loss of perspective looks. In too deep, he’s ruled by an obsession that is evil, but we never lose sight of the person who’s been taken over. Since Washington and McDormand are both in their mid-60s, their scheming has a jaded urgency. This is literally their last stab at power.

There is fine acting throughout, notably from Corey Hawkins as Macduff, who summons the greatest outrage at Macbeth’s treachery, and McDormand, whose sleepwalking speech represents the recovery of her humanity: She knows she can’t wash away the blood that’s been spilled. Coen has trimmed down this already trim (at least for Shakespeare) play, and that was a smart move. He has made a “Macbeth” that is sure to seduce audiences — one that, for all its darkness of import, is light-spirited, fleet, and intoxicating. It shows you, through the ironic empathy summoned by Washington’s performance, just how fast the human race can slip off the tracks. And it brings that drama into ravishing deep focus.

Reviewed at Dolby 88 (New York Film Festival), Sept. 22, 2021. MPAA Rating: R. Running time: 105 MIN.

• Production: An A24, Apple release of an A24, IAC Films production. Producers: Joel Coen, Frances McDormand, Robert Graf.
• Crew: Director, screenplay: Joel Coen. Camera: Bruno Delbonnel. Editors: Lucian Johnson, Reginald Jaynes. Music: Carter Burwell.
• With: Denzel Washington, Frances McDormand, Alex Hassell, Bertie Carvel, Brendan Gleeson, Corey Hawkins, Harry Melling, Miles Anderson, Matt Helm, Moses Ingram, Kathryn Hunter.

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Review: every beat of 'the tragedy of macbeth' is a cinematic flourish.

Bob Mondello

Denzel Washington takes on the title character in Joel Coen's Bard-based film, The Tragedy of Macbeth , with murder-minded Lady Macbeth played by Coen's wife, Frances McDormand.

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The Tragedy of Macbeth review: Shakespeare gets a stark, sumptuous update

Joel Coen lavishes his moody reworking with extraordinary care and atmosphere — helmed by two titanic stars and shot in startling black and white.

All's fair (or foul) in screen adaptations of Shakespeare. When the words are canon for 500 years, where else could they have left to go? The Bard has been turned inside out — recast in the realm of samurais and Lion Kings, Bollywood musicals and American high schools — though he hasn't met a Coen brother, until now. Joel Coen 's The Tragedy of Macbeth , which opened the New York Film Festival on Friday, isn't one of those radical reworkings on the face of it; his script stays almost entirely faithful to the original text. But he lavishes his version with extraordinary care and atmosphere: a stark, sumptuous retelling helmed by two titanic stars and shot in startling black and white.

As the man who would be king, Denzel Washington is, well, Denzel — a force of nature, his fierce command tinged increasingly with madness. Frances McDormand 's Lady Macbeth is all calm surface and calculation, at least at first; if her husband falters in their plan to kill the sitting monarch (a gentle, quizzical Brendan Gleeson) and take his crown, she'll have enough nerve for the both of them. It's easy enough to slit King Duncan's throat and blame the guards, and even better when Duncan's sons (Harry Melling and Matt Helm) run off in a panic, leaving vapor trails of guilt. But the prophesies of the three witches — all played by British theater actress Kathryn Hunt with leering, uncanny glee — foretell more challenges to come, and the machinery of the Macbeths' undoing begins.

Familiar faces dot the screen: In The Heights ' Corey Hawkins as the noble, outraged Macduff; Game of Thrones ' mountainous Ralph Ineson as a stoic captain; veteran character actor Stephen Root as the sozzled Porter, injecting a few brief moments of levity. Many more, like Alex Hassell as the all-seeing go-between Ross, mostly have U.K. stage work on their resumés. They all speak in their own accents, though that's less disruptive than it could be; like the score and the film stock and the colorblind casting, it's all of a piece with Coen's creation and the consuming mood he sets. It's impossible not to talk about the hand of his production designer in that, Stefan Dechant ( Alice in Wonderland ), who sets the idea of The Scottish Play's traditional moors against a kind of surreal Calvinist dream world of screaming birds and sharp geometries — and of cinematographer Bruno Delbonnel ( Darkest Hour , The Ballad of Buster Scruggs ), who frames his shots like a modern-day Fritz Lang, composed for maximum disorienting impact and scale. The costumes too, by Mary Zophres, are fantastic: wools and grommets and leather stitched meticulously together in a mode maybe best described as Luxe Monastic.

Their clean lines suit the rich minimalism of the production and the muscularity of the prose — though Coen sometimes seems in a rush, strangely, to dispatch his storyline and get back to the business of all that style. His pace is so galloping that torrents of dialogue pass by, sweeping past central deaths and sudden plot turns with hardly a pause for breath. For all its physical beauty and austerity, that hurried, heightened reality makes it hard to forget that what you're watching is less a standalone movie than an exceptionally well-staged play put on screen. Still, there's real resonant power in all that sound and fury: a tragedy stripped back and reborn once again but the essential truth of it undiminished, half a millennium on. Grade: B+

The Tragedy of Macbeth opens in theaters on Dec. 25, and streams on AppleTV+ beginning Jan. 14.

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For decades, Joel and Ethan Coen have worked in tandem as one of the industry's most unique directing duos, crafting everything from beloved cult favorites to acclaimed Oscar-winning dramas. The two are so linked it's odd to consider one without the other, which is what makes  The Tragedy of Macbeth so fascinating. Joel is the sole director and the film was made without Ethan's involvement in some capacity. That, combined with a talented ensemble cast led by Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand, made  The Tragedy of Macbeth an interesting release this awards season. Fortunately, it mostly lives up to its on-paper potential.  The Tragedy of Macbeth is a visually stunning and faithful Shakespearean adaptation fueled by captivating performances from its stars.

The Tragedy of Macbeth features Washington as the titular character, a lord who receives a prophecy from three witches claiming he will one day be king. Driven by his own desires and sparked to action by his wife Lady Macbeth (McDormand), Macbeth plots to murder King Duncan (Brendan Gleeson) so that he can take the throne. Consumed by his own paranoia and a lust for power, Macbeth's scheming could ultimately prove to be his downfall.

Related: Denzel Washington's Perfect Final Movie Would Be A Black Panther Sequel

The screenplay, written by Coen, doesn't look to update Shakespeare's prose for modern audiences, instead staying true to the playwright's classic language. This means  The Tragedy of Macbeth may not be fully accessible to all viewers (or even all Coen brothers fans), which could impact how much mileage audiences get out of it. While it can be compelling to see great actors like Washington and McDormand put their spin on famous Shakespeare monologues, it does feel at times that sticking so closely to the source material sapped Coen of his individual voice as a writer. Adaptations can be a tricky balance to pull off, but the Coens have drawn from outside sources multiple times in the past to greater effect.  The Tragedy of Macbeth seems to be missing an extra dose of panache in the writing, as the Coen brothers have always been renowned for their distinct dialogue.

Even if  The Tragedy of Macbeth is missing one half of a talented directorial team, it proves Joel Coen is a strong solo craftsman. The filmmaking on display, bolstered by Bruno Delbonnel's beautiful black-and-white cinematography, Stefan Dechant's production design, and period-accurate costumes, takes viewers back to another time and place. If it wasn't for the presence of contemporary actors,  The Tragedy of Macbeth could easily pass for something made in a different era. The retro 4:3 aspect ratio further complements this approach and adds to its authenticity as a classic Shakespeare adaptation. It's a striking film in terms of the visuals, which ensures viewers will still be able to follow the beats of the story over the course of a brisk sub-two hour runtime.

Unsurprisingly,  The Tragedy of Macbeth is an acting showcase - particularly for Washington. He handles Macbeth's arc with a characteristically engrossing performance that conveys inner conflict, ambition, and a destructive lust for power that is on display in every scene. He commands the audience's attention whenever he's onscreen. McDormand is also excellent as Lady Macbeth, going through her own tragic journey, which is just as captivating to watch as Washington's. What's impressive about the overall ensemble is nobody seems out of place in a traditional Shakespeare adaptation. Everyone in the supporting cast (especially Kathryn Hunter as the eerie witch) slides into their roles and fits into the world Coen has created, meaning audiences onboard for  The Tragedy of Macbeth's approach should never get taken out of the film. The performances of the actors help the movie become more immersive.

The Tragedy of Macbeth is an intriguing beast to come out this holiday season. The Coen brothers were never known for box office prowess, but this could be even more niche than some of their other films. While  The Tragedy of Macbeth is receiving a limited theatrical release, it's also set to stream on Apple TV+, which seems like a strong home for it. It's the kind of project that has a better chance of catching on with viewers at home than making a splash in theaters (particularly in this climate). For the visuals alone, die-hard Shakespeare aficionados and Coen fans could be inclined to seek out showings on the big screen if they feel safe, but anyone else interested can wait for streaming. And, while this is a well-made and well-acted film, it lacks the crossover appeal of Coen's previous works.

Next: Watch the Tragedy of Macbeth Trailer

The Tragedy of Macbeth opens in limited release in U.S. theaters on December 25 and will start streaming on Apple TV+ on January 14, 2022. It runs 105 minutes and is rated R for violence.

The Tragedy of Macbeth

Joel Coen presents The Tragedy of Macbeth, a film based on the classic play written by William Shakespeare, starring Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand. The film retells the story of Macbeth, which entails ambitious goals that result in a usurpers plot and murder that shakes the kingdom to its core.

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The Tragedy of Macbeth Reviews

A hardened neo-noir from a time before noir had a name. It’s a story of self-made losers striking at glory, but who, through hubris and self-doubt, are unable to hold on to it.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Jul 4, 2024

A haunting scene in a beautifully haunted film....

Full Review | Jul 3, 2024

Coen’s direction at times puts you into a mesmerizing gaze that never lets up. Denzel should be in contention for Best Actor but overall I’m not a #Shakespeare fan & was hoping for something a little more unique

Full Review | Jul 26, 2023

The film’s neat, sleek facade takes away the passion and sadly comes off as calculated, contained, and lacking in grandeur. A technical marvel and acting showcase, The Tragedy of Macbeth adds nothing new to this famous tale.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Jul 25, 2023

In The Tragedy of Macbeth, Coen's expertise allows him to paint a threatening world with an inspired and confident brush.

Full Review | Jul 24, 2023

The Tragedy of Macbeth is a mesmerizing technical masterpiece that could have benefited from a distinct take on the well-known Shakespearean tale.

Full Review | Original Score: B+ | Jul 23, 2023

Washington and McDormand bring a dramatic interpretation of the tragic tale. When the two actors are on screen, not a moment is wasted.

Full Review | Jul 21, 2023

It grabs a hold of you by the collar and keeps you focused through Bruno Delbonnel’s dark cinematography and performances that feel it’s straight from the horse’s mouth of great Shakespearean interpreters like Olivier and Branagh.

Full Review | Feb 21, 2023

The movie completely loses whatever energy it had to begin with when McDormand exits, because she was bringing the thrust and momentum of pure anger to the drama.

Full Review | Feb 17, 2023

Denzel Washington gives a thunderous performance in Joel Coen’s stamp on Shakespeare.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Oct 21, 2022

Artistically, The Tragedy of Macbeth is a near-flawless piece of filmmaking, and it's additionally powered by a pair towering turns from Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | Sep 1, 2022

The elder Coen brings his proven visual and screenwriting know-how to some well-traveled material, joining two Oscar winners to put a new spin on a timeless Shakespeare’s tragedy. The results are wickedly satisfying.

Full Review | Original Score: 4.5/5 | Aug 16, 2022

Something astonishing this way comes... another masterwork full of sound and fury signifying everything.

Full Review | Jul 8, 2022

The Tragedy of Macbeth is great. The film has stunning cinematography, immersive production design, and strong performances from both Washington and McDormand. Coen delivered on a visually unique adaption of Shakespeare’s work.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Jun 21, 2022

A strange film in the best sense, it's daring, and it captures Shakespeare's spirit, that man who knew everything about human nature... [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Jun 16, 2022

The way Joel Coen was able to combine a stage play and cinematic experience is unlike anything I've seen.

Full Review | Original Score: A | Jun 9, 2022

A film whose sole purpose is to instill doubt in all things. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | May 16, 2022

Shapes the exploration of the vicissitudes of ambition that takes shape in cruelty: the sweet taste of power, which is ephemeral, and the bitterness of accessing it through crime. 

Full Review | Original Score: 90/100 | May 12, 2022

The world of The Tragedy of Macbeth is a stark one, colored in with shadows. Its hermetic and stage-y a strength, I think. Here we see how the bounds of Shakespeare, film, and acting swell to tell such a story.

Full Review | Apr 5, 2022

When the best thing in a Coen film is a long sword fight, something is missing, and The Tragedy of Macbeth is a movie where we can pinpoint what it was.

Full Review | Mar 28, 2022

• Cast & crew
• User reviews

The Tragedy of Macbeth

A Scottish lord becomes convinced by a trio of witches that he will become the next King of Scotland, and his ambitious wife supports him in his plans of seizing power. A Scottish lord becomes convinced by a trio of witches that he will become the next King of Scotland, and his ambitious wife supports him in his plans of seizing power. A Scottish lord becomes convinced by a trio of witches that he will become the next King of Scotland, and his ambitious wife supports him in his plans of seizing power.

• William Shakespeare
• Denzel Washington
• Frances McDormand
• Alex Hassell
• 316 User reviews
• 217 Critic reviews
• 87 Metascore
• 20 wins & 112 nominations total

Top cast 38

• Lady Macbeth

• Lady Macduff

• Macduff's Son

• All cast & crew
• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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• Trivia The first solo directorial effort by Joel Coen . All of his previous films have been co-directed with his brother Ethan Coen , though Ethan was uncredited as director until 2004 due to DGA rules about directing duos.
• Goofs When Banquo and Fleance prepare to leave, Macbeth tells them their horses are ready. But Denzel Washington gets the line backwards. He says, "I commend them to your backs," instead of "I commend you to their backs." He speaks of plural horses, but in the next shot, Fleance is riding the only horse, and Banquo is walking.

Macbeth : Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, creeps in this petty pace from day to day to the last syllable of recorded time. And all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle. Life is but a walking shadow... a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot... full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

• Connections Featured in The Graham Norton Show: Martin Freeman/Denzel Washington/Josh Widdicombe/Nina Sosanya/James Morrison (2022)
• Soundtracks Fair Is Foul (feat. Kathryn Hunter) Artist: Carter Burwell

User reviews 316

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• Jan 25, 2022
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• Why do the Weird Sisters tell Macbeth that he will be king?
• January 14, 2022 (United States)
• United States
• Warner Brothers Burbank Studios - 4000 Warner Boulevard, Burbank, California, USA (Studio)
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• Runtime 1 hour 45 minutes
• Black and White
• Dolby Atmos
• Dolby Digital

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‘The Tragedy of Macbeth’ Review: An Expressionist Twist on a Shakespeare Classic

Dir. joel coen — 4.5 stars.

Historically, adapting “Macbeth” into film has meant rich, detailed period pieces, from Orson Welles’ sweeping epic, to Akira Kurosawa’s visceral “Throne of Blood,” to Justin Kurzel’s luscious Palme d’Or contender. That’s what makes “The Tragedy of Macbeth” feel remarkably fresh: Writer-director Joel Coen paints his latest film in unapologetic, ethereal strokes of black-and-white expressionism.

It’s interesting that Coen, known for interrogating and subverting old Hollywood genres, has chosen a Shakespeare adaptation as his latest film. Coen’s diverse work consists of biting, reflexive, and distinctly American satires, from Bush-era crime films like “Burn after Reading,” to existential comedies like “Barton Fink,” to masochistic rom-coms like “Intolerable Cruelty.”

Suffice to say, “The Tragedy of Macbeth” is tonally different from Coen’s previous films — seething and haunting, rather than his usual mix of playful and cynical. That’s because story-wise, “Macbeth” retreads familiar territory: The titular Scottish general (Denzel Washington, in a towering, dynamic performance) encounters three witches (all played by Kathryn Hunter), who prophesize that he would be King. Adamant and power-hungry, Macbeth and his wife (Frances McDormand) scheme to kill King Duncan. Once crowned, however, Macbeth’s tyranny sparks a civil war — and eventually, his downfall.

Coen adapts plot and dialogue extremely faithfully — characters even speak in Shakespearean English. But these artistic choices don’t make “Macbeth” any less subversive: On a formal level, it’s just as twisted and genre-bending as Coen’s previous work. For one, the film isn’t shot in ancient castles and expansive landscapes, like the many adaptations before it. It’s shot entirely in sound stages to remove any semblance of reality.

“The Tragedy of Macbeth” is not a film about “Macbeth” so much as it is a film about the theatrical production of “Macbeth.” Coen deconstructs the unique performativity, lighting, and staging of theater productions — pulling from the medium-specificity of stage to imprint a vibrant, visceral, and eerily artificial texture into his film. Speaking in an interview at the New York Film Festival with festival curator and Harvard Professor Dennis Lim, Coen said “I think this proceeded from [Frances McDormand] asking me to [direct “Macbeth”] on stage. I didn’t want to abandon the notion of the play. It was taking a play, and making a movie of it, which was interesting to me. Not turning a play into a movie.”

To create the impression of artificiality, “The Tragedy of Macbeth” relies heavily on visuals, with detailed compositions by 6-time Academy Award nominee Bruno Delbonnel. In his early work with director Jean-Pierre Jeunet on “Amélie” and “A Very Long Engagement,” Delbonnel coated his film stock in a decadent layer of warm amber and nostalgic pastel green. His early characters popped off the screen with a zest that matched their passion for life. But Delbonnel used a more muted palette when he collaborated with the Coen brothers in “Inside Llewyn Davis” — while still using a surrealist license to capture the wistful alienation of artist ego.

Now, Delbonnel’s work in “Macbeth” takes surrealism a step further. Shot in black and white, “The Tragedy of Macbeth” is steeped in German expressionism — mirroring character interiority through complex shapes and long shadows, and leveraging visual tension on screen to create mood and atmosphere. Delbonnel uses extremely dramatic, harsh, single-point lighting to draw haunting shadows that reflect characters’ deepest fears and feverish insecurities. These techniques are accentuated by gorgeous modern architecture and production design, which hangs over the film like a subconscious, unsettling, anachronistic cloud.

“The Tragedy of Macbeth” was also filmed in black-and-white, and in a 4:3 Academy aspect ratio, to add multiple layers of reflexivity. In an interview at NYFF, Joel Coen explained the choices, saying that the idea of shooting “Macbeth” in black and white and in 4:3 was “there from the beginning… black and white is a way of instantly abstracting an image in a way that everyone understands. You’re abstracting it by taking the color away, but it’s not like people read it as being ‘abstract’ in quotation marks.” So, just as the film deals with the artificiality of theater, it draws the audience’s attention to artificiality within the film as well.

Overall, this sheen of artificiality enhances the most intense emotional moments in “Macbeth” to high-pitched sensory success. This hallucinatory atmosphere stretches from the mystical compositions when the witches appear, to the disturbing monologue in Lady Macbeth’s sleepwalking scene, to the isolation at the end of the film, when Macbeth’s battle is lost, and he saunters — delusional — through the empty hallways of his once great castle.

Though “The Tragedy of Macbeth'' is a very different film from the rest of Coen’s filmography, complete with archaic English and a 400-year-old story, it still manages to feel incredibly modern. It’s a unique twist on one of Shakespeare’s classics — an adaptation that draws on, and self-awarely engages in, cross-medium artificiality.

—Staff writer Lanz Aaron G. Tan can be reached at [email protected] and on Twitter @ LanzAaronGTan1 .

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The Tragedy Of Macbeth Review: Denzel Washington And Frances McDormand Cut A Bloody Swathe Through Joel Coen's Expressionist Nightmare [NYFF]

"Life is but a walking shadow," Denzel Washington's Macbeth quietly bemoans as he sees the beginning of the end of his short and violent reign in Joel Coen's explosive adaptation of The Scottish Play. Coen's "The Tragedy of Macbeth," strong emphasis on the "tragedy," is the latest in a long line of adaptations of the Shakespeare classic, but it's easily the most thrillingly modern, strikingly minimalist of the bunch. And it does so by operating from the shadows — literally, in the case of Coen and cinematographer Bruno Delbonnel's choice to shoot the film in black-and-white and almost exclusively in silhouettes; but also spiritually, in a film that is the harshest and most cynical iteration of "Macbeth."

I probably don't have to recount in too much detail the plot of "Macbeth." A celebrated Scottish general named Macbeth (Washington) receives a prophecy from a trio of witches that he will become King of Scotland, leading him down a path of bloody betrayals and cold-blooded assassinations that send both him and his wife Lady Macbeth (Frances McDormand, terrifying and terrific) on a quick descent into madness. But as loyal as Coen (directing solo for the first time and doing so without a single stumble) is to the dialogue and tone of the Shakespeare play — even playing up some of the latent humor of the Bard — there are various innovations that transform "The Tragedy of Macbeth" into a form of a dread-filled psychological thriller.

Bold Strokes in Black and White

Anchored by a ferocious Washington, who threatens to rip that Oscar right out of the throat of the Academy with his bare teeth, "The Tragedy of Macbeth" is an otherworldly masterwork that owes its bold strokes and striking black-and-white imagery — all dark silhouettes and stark white backgrounds full of fog (or more ominously, smoke) — to that of the German expressionism and seedy noirs. The unforgiving stone castles of Scotland and its barren moors — full of little else but withered branches and lots of fog — cast deep, dark shadows from within which the ambitious Macbeth and his equally greedy wife plot and scheme. When they emerge into the light, to march upon sand that looks as white as snow or pale stone walls untouched by man, it's only to spray black pools of blood onto it or see visions of their own doom. 

"The Tragedy of Macbeth" is one of the most beautiful films this year, breathtaking in Coen and Delbonnel's mastery of the black-and-white color scheme, which cast its heroes in light and its villains in shades of grey or shadow. The abundant use of silhouettes, jagged cliffsides, and long shadowy archways echo those of German expressionist films, but also look eerily akin to shadow puppetry, as if human characters (clad in stiff capes and body-hugging outfits that aid in creating those sharp silhouettes) in "The Tragedy of Macbeth" are simply acting out a shadow puppet play that has happened over and over again.

But as inspired as Coen and Delbonnel are by films such as the "Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" or even those expressionist elements filtered through the works of Ingmar Bergman (yes, I won't be the first to call attention to the visual similarities to "The Seventh Seal," and I won't be the last), "The Tragedy of Macbeth" has an almost ascetic look to it that is in direct opposition to the scorching performances by the incredible cast.

A King Among Performers

Washington gives a barn-burner of a performance as Macbeth, fierce and frightening and nearly unhinged, especially in the latter half of Macbeth's descent into madness as the hated Tyrant. But before he gets accused of being too showy, Washington — who has done this Shakespeare rodeo before, playing Prince Aragon in Kenneth Branagh's 1993 adaptation of "Much Ado About Nothing" and starring in the 2005 production of "Julius Caesar" — brings to the role a resigned weariness that a younger actor would not be able to achieve. As if he's accepted from the beginning that this meteoric rise to power can only end in doom. There's always an inevitability to "Macbeth," the cautionary tale of how knowledge and power corrupts. As soon as Macbeth hears the prophecy from the three witches, he's signed his fate, and Washington plays it as a man who both knows and struggles against this vicious cycle.

Therein lies the genius of casting "older" actors like Washington and McDormand. As a noble couple in their 60s, they grasp at the opportunity for power that might have passed them by when they were younger — and that they may not receive again. So there's a desperation to each of their actions, especially as Macbeth becomes possessed with the same bloodlust that Lady Macbeth had at the beginning, while McDormand's Lady Macbeth becomes wracked with the guilt that her husband felt at the beginning. They are the true standout stars of the film, injecting "The Tragedy of Macbeth" with a bitterness and fragility and sensuality that feels thoroughly modern.

But the rest of the supporting cast are no slouches either. Kathryn Hunter, who plays the witches as a Smeagol-like contortionist who has the ability to turn the two shadows she casts into a pair of faceless cloaked creatures, is a sinister standout. As is Alex Hassell as the conniving thane Ross, wearing what can only be described as a body suit with a hooded cape, and knowing he looks good in it. Corey Hawkins continues his rise to movie stardom as the noble Macduff, Macbeth's would-be slayer, while Bertie Carvel gives a wonderfully tragic performance as Banquo. Of course, there's the unexpectedly hilarious surprise of Stephen Root as a drunken porter, one of the major sources of levity in the bleak assault that is Coen's "The Tragedy of Macbeth." Apart from a few shaky child actors (Shakespeare is hard!) the performances are across the board fantastic.

Coen shows an understanding of Shakespeare's original play as well as a willingness to go beyond it. His "Tragedy of Macbeth" leans into the staginess of the story, while tapping into the surreal nightmare of the whole thing. It's nothing short of magnificent.

/Film Rating: 9.5 out of 10

Review: On Joel Coen’s ‘The Tragedy of Macbeth,’ a recommendation in five acts

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I. “If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well it were done quickly.”

Joel Coen’s “The Tragedy of Macbeth” may have a slightly longer title than past adaptations of the Scottish Play, but the movie itself, at 105 minutes, is actually tighter than most. It’s a few minutes shy of Justin Kurzel’s “Macbeth” (2015), the most recent major screen adaptation, and more than half an hour shorter than Roman Polanski’s 1971 film, perhaps the maddest and grisliest of the lot. If Coen’s retelling feels exceptionally fleet, it’s because he has slashed away lines and even passages of Shakespeare’s text with his own Macbeth-like ruthlessness; he distills each sequence to its furious essence. Scenes flow into one another with a swiftness and elegance that builds its own momentum. Rarely have these nightmarish events seemed more inevitable.

The visuals are as stripped-down as the words. Coen and his director of photography, Bruno Delbonnel, brilliantly evoke the look of older films with a stark black-and-white palette and a nearly square aspect ratio. “The Tragedy of Macbeth” is an astounding piece of movie craftsmanship. It opens in milky white mists, then plunges us into a labyrinth of noir shadows in which every shaft of light seems perfectly placed to emphasize the minimalist arches-and-tiles geometry of Stefan Dechant’s production design. Even the allusions feel economical; Coen distills entire cinematic histories into the frame. The intense chiaroscuro recalls any number of great directors: Carl Theodor Dreyer, Ingmar Bergman, the Orson Welles who made his own “Macbeth” in 1948. An early scene, set in a tent through which we can see the shadows of gnarled branches, seems to evoke Akira Kurosawa’s masterly 1957 retelling, “Throne of Blood.”

And when the actors step forth from these gloomy expressionist shadows, they often plant themselves center-frame and speak directly to the camera — a choice that feels rooted in both an older era of filmmaking and the earlier traditions of the theater. Like so many films Joel Coen has made with his brother, Ethan, this “Macbeth” — his first purely solo outing as writer-director — feels like a master class in multitasking. It is also, of course, the latest Coen picture to center on a man who acts with foolish abandon and becomes trapped in an ever-expanding disaster of his own making. The chilly Scottish moors we see here truly are no country for old men, the setting for one of our most enduring tales of intolerable cruelty.

II. “There’s no art to find the mind’s construction in the face.”

When we first see Macbeth (a superb Denzel Washington), thane of Glamis, he already looks slightly lost. The fog around him is literal and metaphorical; confusion haunts his features. Perhaps he’s still dazed from his latest military triumph alongside his best friend and battle comrade, Banquo (Bertie Carvel). Or perhaps the witches’ prophecy that he’s about to hear, the one foretelling his rise to the throne, has already begun to unmoor him from reality.

When I first heard that Washington was going to play Macbeth — the latest Shakespeare role for this veteran of a Broadway revival of “Julius Caesar” and Kenneth Branagh’s splendid film of “Much Ado About Nothing” — I initially steeled myself for a lot of stentorian bellowing. But until all hell breaks loose in the later acts, Washington underplays beautifully; his Macbeth is a triumph of psychological containment. Early on he’s watchful, stealthy, testing his own resolve, murmuring his lines rather than declaiming them. The tortured words and phrases seem to well up from someplace deep within himself, as if they were being articulated for the first time.

Still, you could mute Macbeth’s every line and see, in Washington’s visage, a great and terrible escalation. There’s a lovely moment early on when Lady Macbeth (Frances McDormand) awakens to find her husband seated on the bed beside her, and a ghost of a smile plays over his face — one of his few genuine smiles, full of tenderness, affection and even a glimmer of the erotic life these two have shared. It’s an image that will be chillingly echoed a few beats later, when King Duncan (Brendan Gleeson, genuinely regal) stirs and sees Macbeth looming over him, his eyes no longer full of love but rather a cold, lethal sense of purpose.

III. “Upon my head they placed a fruitless crown. And put a barren scepter in my grip.”

Washington and McDormand are both in their 60s, which is older casting than usual for Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, and it adds a poignant dimension to their diabolical scheming. From the start, their murderous plot against Duncan has an air of tragic futility. Macbeth, you sense, has spent the better part of his life being passed over for higher leadership. This is his last stab at greatness, and any such greatness will be short-lived. There is no child to carry on his legacy; that’s always been true of Macbeth, but here it feels like more than just a present-tense misfortune. His heirlessness carries the weight of a lifelong deprivation.

It’s a burden that also drags heavily on his wife, but she casts it bitterly aside as she urges her husband to embrace his destiny while he still can. McDormand played this role onstage in a 2016 Berkeley Rep production, and what makes her such a strangely insidious Lady Macbeth is how skillfully she draws on the qualities we associate with her other, kinder film characters. This Lady Macbeth is fiercely loving and loyal, protective of her husband even (especially) in his moments of weakness, and apt to admonish him in that no-nonsense, commonsensical tone that McDormand nails better than just about any actor. So reasonable does she sound at times that you might just about see the wisdom of her words, if she weren’t methodically plotting a political assassination.

IV. “Double, double toil and trouble; fire burn and cauldron bubble.”

There’s no shortage of fine performances in “The Tragedy of Macbeth,” whose superb ensemble comprises actors from both stage and screen. Carvel makes an outstanding Banquo, his sad, wise eyes seeming to convey the knowledge of his own impending betrayal. The spirited, youthful vitality of Corey Hawkins and Moses Ingram as Macduff and Lady Macduff, respectively, positions them in notable counterpoint to their rivals the Macbeths. And I especially liked Alex Hassell as Ross, the sly nobleman-messenger who, in an artfully expanded role, serves as this story’s very busy bearer of bad news. (He also wears one of Mary Zophres’ more evocative costumes, a robe that, simply by the way it dangles and sways, seems to evoke the character’s ever-shifting allegiances.)

But perhaps the finest acting in “The Tragedy of Macbeth” — and the most powerful magic — is conjured by the English stage actor Kathryn Hunter as all three Weird Sisters, the old crones who first set this fateful tale of murder in motion. Hunter’s appearances are brief but darkly enthralling: With her hooded face, spooky incantations and contortionist gestures, she really does look and sound as though she’d been plucked from some distant medieval hellscape. Hunter’s performance also calls forth some of Coen’s most inventive staging: Rather than simply showing the witches stirring their brew, the director has them perch in the rafters and loom, bird-like, over Macbeth, peering down as the ground beneath his feet becomes a seething, all-consuming cauldron. It’s a startling representational coup — and scarcely the only moment when this “Tragedy of Macbeth” tilts boldly toward abstraction.

V. “Horror! Horror! Horror!”

While Coen can stage a murder as frighteningly as any living filmmaker, his monochrome canvas does its part to neutralize some of the horror, and the killing is dispensed with as swiftly as anything else. He doesn’t linger on the carnage; he doesn’t linger on much of anything, which is a testament to this movie’s astounding discipline and the key to some of its limitations.

There are moments when you want to linger, to let this world and all its darkly conjured magic — as well as its lessons on the horrors of tyranny in any era — sink ever deeper into your bones. But instead Coen keeps accelerating, and the drama’s final reckonings — Macbeth’s embrace of his dark fate, Lady Macbeth’s remorseful unraveling — feel less like the tragic operations of fate than the workings of an impeccably tooled machine. “The Tragedy of Macbeth” is an immaculate vision: coldly efficient, aesthetically faultless, splendidly acted. I do wish it had a bit more blood in it.

‘The Tragedy of Macbeth’

Rated: R, for violence Running time: 1 hour, 45 minutes Playing: Starts Dec. 25 in general release; available Jan. 14 on Apple TV+

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The tragedy of macbeth.

• Common Sense Says
• Parents Say 1 Review
• Kids Say 3 Reviews

Common Sense Media Review

Stark, violent, and one of the best Shakespeare films ever.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that The Tragedy of Macbeth is director Joel Coen's adaptation of William Shakespeare's tragic play, starring Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand. Masterfully made, diversely cast, and filmed in stark black and white, it's one of the best Shakespeare movies ever made, and it's highly…

Why Age 15+?

Strong violence. Knives and stabbing. Bloody wounds. Dripping blood, pools of bl

Minor sexual innuendo.

Uses of "damn," "hell."

Minor characters appear drunk. Background drinking.

Any Positive Content?

A diverse take on Shakespeare, with a Black leading man and an interracial coupl

As complex as the play may seem, it's basically a morality tale about people who

No positive role models. The two main characters commit murder and frame innocen

Violence & Scariness

Strong violence. Knives and stabbing. Bloody wounds. Dripping blood, pools of blood. Fighting with swords. Beheading. Women and children killed. Unsettling, scary images.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Diverse Representations

A diverse take on Shakespeare, with a Black leading man and an interracial couple at the center. Macduff, another of the play's most important characters, is Black, as is his family (though they're brutally killed).

Did we miss something on diversity? Suggest an update.

Positive Messages

As complex as the play may seem, it's basically a morality tale about people who didn't make good choices and ultimately pay a price that's more or less equal to their crimes. Power corrupts, and those in power will do anything, regardless of moral implications, to keep it.

Positive Role Models

No positive role models. The two main characters commit murder and frame innocent people to make a grab at power, then continue down the same path. Most other characters are merely victims. Even those who remain standing in the end were forced to get there via violence.

Parents need to know that The Tragedy of Macbeth is director Joel Coen 's adaptation of William Shakespeare's tragic play, starring Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand . Masterfully made, diversely cast, and filmed in stark black and white, it's one of the best Shakespeare movies ever made, and it's highly recommended for mature viewers. Violence is the biggest issue, with knives, stabbing, sword fighting, blood, a beheading, and the murder of a woman and children, as well as some spooky imagery involving the witches. Other than that, "damn" and "hell" are used, and there's some fairly innocent Shakespeare-style sexual innuendo. Minor characters appear drunk, and there's some background drinking. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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Parent and Kid Reviews

• Parents say (1)
• Kids say (3)

Based on 1 parent review

Stellar, gripping, fantastical re-telling of 500 year old play

What's the story.

In THE TRAGEDY OF MACBETH, Macbeth ( Denzel Washington ) and Banquo ( Bertie Carvel ) return from war. They encounter three witches (all played by Kathryn Hunter), who offer prophecies. Macbeth will become Thane of Cawdor and then king. Banquo won't be king, but he will be the father of future kings. Back in Scotland, Macbeth learns that he has now, indeed, been named Thane of Cawdor, so he begins thinking about the next prophecy. Meanwhile, the current king ( Brendan Gleeson ) plans to spend the night at the Macbeth castle. Lady Macbeth ( Frances McDormand ) talks her husband into killing the king. He has misgivings but goes through with the deed, and the murder is blamed on two drunk chamberlains. Now king, Macbeth begins to obsess about Banquo and the other part of the prophecy. Worse, Lady Macbeth starts to come unraveled, and the witches return with even stranger prophecies.

Is It Any Good?

Stark and severe, with a level of artistry rarely achieved in movies, this black-and-white tragedy may be the best Macbeth ever made, and it's certainly one of the best-ever Shakespeare adaptations. Director Joel Coen -- working for the first time without his brother Ethan -- covers ground formerly trod by Orson Welles , Akira Kurosawa , and Roman Polanski and surpasses them all with his expressionistic, intensely vivid The Tragedy of Macbeth . The angles and lines and blades of light displayed on-screen by Coen and cinematographer Bruno Delbonnel slash the play down to its most elemental, primal levels. All staginess is gone. It's exhilarating. It's as if the play were always meant to be a movie -- this movie.

Washington is magisterial in the title role, bringing his singular vocal flavor to the dialogue and providing an inner uncoiling as Macbeth loses his way. (Washington had previous Shakespeare experience in Kenneth Branagh's Much Ado About Nothing .) Sharp and commanding, McDormand might have been born to play Lady Macbeth. Theater veteran Hunter is likewise astonishing as all three witches, coming across like nightmarish praying (or preying) mantises. Even the score by Carter Burwell, whose work is often lush and luxurious, consists of spare, cautionary music that sounds like a death knell. Every element of The Tragedy of Macbeth , from the hard, cold furniture to the swirling crows and drifting fog, is exactly right, but it's a precision that gets to the heart of the tale's dark emotions.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about the violence in The Tragedy of Macbeth . How did it make you feel? Was it exciting? Shocking? What did the movie show or not show to achieve this effect? Why is that important?

Do you think Macbeth would have thought to kill the king if he hadn't heard the prophecy from the witches? What purpose do the witches serve in this story?

Why do we still tell Shakespeare's stories after hundreds of years? What can we learn from them?

How is this version of Macbeth different from others you might have seen? Is there any one "correct" way to adapt or perform Shakespeare?

How many familiar phrases or lines did you recognize in the movie ("the milk of human kindness," "the be-all and the end-all," "one fell swoop," etc.)? Did you know how many figures of speech Shakespeare was responsible for?

Movie Details

• In theaters : December 25, 2021
• On DVD or streaming : January 14, 2022
• Cast : Denzel Washington , Frances McDormand , Kathryn Hunter
• Director : Joel Coen
• Inclusion Information : Black actors, Female actors
• Studio : A24
• Genre : Drama
• Topics : Book Characters
• Run time : 105 minutes
• MPAA rating : R
• MPAA explanation : violence
• Last updated : March 24, 2023

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Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

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What to watch next.

Hamlet (1996)

Much Ado About Nothing

William Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice

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The Tragedy Of Macbeth Review

The Tragedy Of Macbeth

Joel Coen . Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand . This gang could have staged Macbeth while reclining on a bed of laurels (brought from home) and it would have likely been pretty watchable. But there’s no lolling about in this sparse, stripped-down adaptation. These thoroughly established sexagenarians bring the energy of a young Orson Welles to Shakespeare’s Scottish play, creating an almost horror-film take on all the power, ambition and violence.

We open in a white expanse, misty sky seamlessly meeting blasted heath, as Ralph Ineson's Captain staggers to King Duncan ( Brendan Gleeson ) to report a victory won by Macbeth (Denzel Washington) and his loyal friend Banquo (Bertie Carvel). As those two warriors follow him, however, witches appear with word of glories to come. The prospect of a prophesied throne quickly curdles Macbeth and, egged on by his wife (Frances McDormand), he abandons honour and plots Duncan's murder. It is done, and quickly — but the conspirators are ill-suited to authority and guilt-ridden besides, and they unravel along with their country.

So far, so traditional. Where this differs is in its extraordinary good looks. Coen, working for the first time without his brother Ethan, keeps an element of theatricality with the white walls of cloud or castle that surround almost every scene, but he’s not above adding the soaring silhouettes of distant fortresses or a few gnarled trees to remind us that we’re in medieval Scotland, and a slightly fantastical version thereof. Production designer Stefan Dechant’s interiors are gorgeous, with clean Gothic and classical elements that recall Julie Taymor’s use of fascist architecture in Titus or the Expressionistic shapes of Welles’ theatre work. It's a stunning look, shot in crisp, high-contrast black-and-white by Bruno Delbonnel, all shadows and empty space — as suits its protagonist.

McDormand was always going to be convincing in Lady Macbeth’s ruthlessness, but the surprise is that she finds her weakness.

Washington’s Macbeth is, as you’d expect, brilliant, the kind of leader who speaks softly but carries a very big stick. He’s less thuggish than some theatre incarnations of the character — this is a leader of some cunning as well as brawn-for-brains — but he’s still visibly easier when the time comes for action. He seems almost relieved when the prophecies finally unravel around him, less railing against Macduff (Corey Hawkins) and more bowing to the inevitable. McDormand, meanwhile, was always going to be convincing in Lady Macbeth’s ruthlessness, but the surprise is that she finds her weakness, and crumbles convincingly when her husband largely abandons her for other concerns.

In a script that’s thoroughly pared down, even from Shakespeare’s shortest tragedy, few other actors make a huge impact. Carvel is a hirsute, wary Banquo; Hawkins a steely-eyed Macduff; Alex Hassell a remarkably compelling and sometimes sinister Ross, who’s not usually such a central character. Perhaps the most extraordinary, however, is Kathryn Hunter as all three witches, contorted in body and voice into something genuinely terrifying. King hereafter or no, a wise warrior would run a mile from this prophet.

Through it all thrums a steady tick-tocking heartbeat, a metronomic rhythm of heavy footsteps, portentous knocking and Carter Burwell’s lean score. Macbeth’s time is running out, and deep in Denzel Washington’s eyes there’s a sense that this Thane Of Glamis knows it. It’s that inescapable knowledge that gives this Macbeth its true sense of tragedy.

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Movie Review: ‘The Tragedy of Macbeth,’ Is a Visually Stunning Adaption of Shakespeare’s Play, Anchored by Flawless Performances from Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand

Acclaimed filmmaker Joel Coen’s solo directorial debut is a brilliant adaption of William Shakespeare’s Macbeth, with stunning cinematography and Oscar-worthy performances from its two leads.

Denzel Washington in 'The Tragedy of Macbeth'

Opening in theaters on December 25th is the latest adaption of William Shakespeare’s classic stage play ‘Macbeth,’ which is directed by Oscar-winner Joel Coen (‘No Country for Old Men’) entitled ‘ The Tragedy of Macbeth .’ The film stars two-time Academy Award-winner Denzel Washington (‘Glory’ and ‘Training Day’) in the title role, and three-time Academy Award-winning actress Frances McDormand (‘Fargo,’ ‘Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri’ and ‘Nomadland’) as Lady Macbeth. In addition to Washington and McDormand, the cast also includes Corey Hawkins (‘Straight Outta Compton’), Brendan Gleeson (‘In Bruges’), and Stephen Root (‘Office Space’). The result is a smart and sophisticated retelling of the Bard’s classic play with stellar performances from Denzel Washington and Francis McDormand.

The film begins by introducing us to Macbeth (Washington), a Scottish lord who after battle meets three witches (all played by Kathryn Hunter ). The witches predict that Macbeth will soon be King, and while skeptical, he begins to see their prophecy come true. He writes a letter to his wife Lady Macbeth (McDormand), telling her of the witches and the prophecy, and she encourages him to kill the King (Brendan Gleeson) in order for it all come true. Macbeth agrees and while the King is visiting their home, he hatches a plan to assassinate him. Once Macbeth is King, he becomes paranoid of losing the throne and commits a series of murders to try and cover up his assignation of the former King. Macbeth begins to see the ghosts of his victims, while Lady Macbeth suffers from the guilt of their crimes and goes mad. Distraught over his wife’s death, and misunderstanding the witch’s prophecy, Macbeth goes to war with England.

Joel and Ethan Coen are probably the greatest directing duo of all time. Their resume of films is truly incredible and includes such movies as ‘Raising Arizona,’ ‘Fargo,’ ‘The Big Lebowski,’ ‘No Country for Old Men,’ ‘Burn After Reading,’ ‘True Grit,’ ‘Inside Llweyn Davis,’ and ‘Hail, Cesar!’ But ‘The Tragedy of Macbeth’ marks the first film Joel Coen has made without his brother, and it is everything you would expect from the director. The film masterfully balances the strange and odd aspects that everyone loves about the Coen Brothers, while mixing it with the classic Shakespeare play. The film is shot in black-and-white, which seems to be in vogue this season after ‘Belfast’ and ‘C’mon C’mon,’ and is a brilliant choice that is appropriate to the source material. Coen uses a lot of quick cuts and interesting editing techniques to help the audience follow the source material’s intricate twists and turns.

The director also blocks the actors excellently, just like in a play, so every movement has gravitas and meaning behind it. He also uses close-ups really well, choosing to focus the camera on an actor's face as they give a monologue directly to the audience. The production design is incredible, utilizing giant spaces with minimal setting, which doesn’t take away from the gravity of the performances. The lighting in the film is also well-done, and Coen really plays with the contrast between darkness and light, which makes for some visually stunning sequences. Cinematographer Bruno Delbonnel , who also shot ‘Inside Llweyn Davis’ and ‘The French Dispatch’ really did an amazing job and deserves an Academy Award nomination. While I don’t expect Coen to be nominated for Best Director, it's already a packed field, I do think the film is in the running for a Best Picture nomination, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Coen is gifted with a Best Adapted Screenplay nom.

The supporting cast is strong and handles the material well, especially Stephen Root, who is quite funny as The Porter. Brendan Gleeson gives a very good and pivotal performance as King Duncan, and has some excellent scenes with Washington and McDormand. Corey Hawkins is an actor I’ve had my eye on since ‘Straight Outta Compton,’ where he played Dr. Dre. It was a brilliant performance and since then the actor has appeared in ‘Kong: Skull Island,’ Spike Lee’s ‘BlacKkKlansman,’ and ‘In the Heights.’ In this film, not only does the young actor have to recite Shakespeare’s words, but he also has to act opposite Denzel Washington, and he pulls off both with ease, giving an excellent performance as Macduff. I also want to mention actress Kathryn Hunter, who gives a wonderfully creepy and extremely physical performance as all three of the witches.

I also suspect that Oscar-winners Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand will probably both get nominated for Best Actor and Best Actress, respectively, again this year. They both give jaw-droppingly good performances and while watching the movie you really realize how truly gifted they both are. It’s easy with Shakespeare to fall into the rhythm of his words and not really make them your own, or truly embody them, which is exactly what Washington and McDormand do. They both recite the dialogue perfectly, and you completely believe they are their characters, but at the same time, you never forget they are Denzel and Frances. It’s really remarkable to watch. Washington infuses Macbeth with his trademark cool, something the character has never had before. It’s in the dialogue and the way he walks, making the material fresh and new. McDormand is an absolute joy to watch, and the way she interprets particular lines is genius and comes from her own unique personality. The two also have an electrifying chemistry on screen together, and I hope that they will work together again someday.

However, the film is not without its faults. Shakespeare can be difficult for many to understand as the material is very dense, and while Coen did a great job interpreting the material cinematically, I could see it that it would be easy for some audience members to get lost. It may be a difficult watch for those not familiar with the original play, as it can be a confusing story, but for those who are familiar, it's easy to follow. In the end, ‘The Tragedy of Macbeth’ is a thrilling and vibrant retelling of Shakespeare’s classic play, masterfully directed by Joel Coen and featuring transcendent performances from two of the greatest screen actors of all-time. ‘The Tragedy of Macbeth’ receives 4 out of 5 stars.

The Tragedy of Macbeth

Jami Philbrick has worked in the entertainment industry for over 20 years and is currently the Editor-in-Chief of Moviefone.com. Formally, Philbrick was the Managing Editor of Relativity Media's iamROGUE.com, and a Senior Staff Reporter and Video Producer for Mtime, China's largest entertainment website. He has also written for Fandango, MovieWeb, and Comic Book Resources. Philbrick received the 2019 International Media Award at the 56th annual ICG Publicists Awards, and is a member of the Critics Choice Association. He has interviewed such talent as Tom Cruise, George Clooney, Dwayne Johnson, Scarlett Johansson, Angelina Jolie, Oprah Winfrey, Quentin Tarantino, and Stan Lee.

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Denzel Washington Is the King of Pain in ‘The Tragedy of Macbeth’

By K. Austin Collins

K. Austin Collins

There are only three actual witches in Shakespeare’s Macbeth . That’s the story of the “Scottish Play” as we know it: foul, foggy, and — if karma is real — damningly fair to its titular king-to-be, who takes the germ of an idea proposed by that trio of “weird sisters,” the idea that he will become king, and allows it to metastasize into a consuming, destructive hunger for power. The kind of hunger that makes you kill your friends, slaughter children, wreak havoc in pursuit of what will only last as long as you’re alive. Which, in Macbeth’s case, is not for much longer. 

What if there were a fourth witch? Not in the literal sense, but rather a meddler, a planter of devious seeds. This powerful intervener is far more hands-on, nudging the action along this way and that, getting their hands dirty in the cloak and dagger of it all and — in line with those witches, pending how you interpret them — shaping the fate of the play’s tragic hero with an almost godlike knowingness and an equally potent silence. 

This wouldn’t require some radical revision of the original play, which endures in part because the tangle of influences on Macbeth’s desires can lean in multiple directions, depending how we want to spin it. The most memorable film adaptations over the years attest to this, from Orson Welles’ low-budget, noirish version in 1948, to Akira Kurosawa’s 1957 Throne of Blood (in which the three witches are whittled down to one evil spirit who, like mythology’s Three Fates, work a loom while delivering Macbeth the news of his imminent power), to Roman Polanski’s notorious 1971 adaptation, controversial in its time for its bloody rendering of things Shakespeare left to the imagination. We could be talking about Lady Macbeth (whose gradual disillusionment with her husband’s schemes is palpable for Welles, whereas Kurosawa, Polanski, and many others paint her in more starkly manipulative terms) or some other player.

However it happens, Macbeth is often enough inclined toward his worst impulses by someone egging him on out of their own self-interest. What resounds, in every great version of this play, is a sense that culpability is hardly the flaw of Macbeth’s alone. Proximity to power creates hunger in even those who’ll only briefly have any chance to wield it. But the mere chance… That it proves so titillating for so many is part of what Macbeth exposes about everyone involved — and everyone watching. 

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Joel Coen ’s The Tragedy of Macbeth — which is now streaming on Apple TV + after a brief theatrical run — is both satisfying and limited, spot-on and slightly off, for myriad reasons. But you can’t fault it for lacking a genuine sense of interpretation, the type of deviation from the original material that works to illuminate ideas that had been there from the start. Adapted from the play by Coen himself, with Denzel Washington as our titular antihero and Frances McDormand as Lady Macbeth, this is very much a Coen movie in its worldview. The story plays out in what feels like a bleak, vacuum-sealed, artificial nowhere, filmed (by cinematographer Bruno Delbonnel) in crisp black and white images, with the drama thrashing forward entirely on sound stages. The world of this Macbeth feels as horizonless as the king-to-be’s prospects. Clearly, this is to the point.

Design is what proves striking here above most else, even the extraordinarily talented array of actors — even the nimble, spindly Kathryn Hunter , who plays the witches and, later, an old man. Because it’s in the movie’s design that its ideas thrive most freely and convincingly. The castle of this future King of Scotland is barren — and barrenness is one of the creeping themes here. The Macbeths are childless, after all, and unlike their iterations in those other adaptations, older. No son? No heir. This reign is doomed from the start. Hence the joylessness of the Macbeths’ home. The castle walls are tall but unvarnished, unless you’d count light and shadow as decor. Furnishings are minimal. The atrium is more panopticon than kingly foyer, designed with power and perspective in mind: From certain vantages, one can hide completely out of view there, yet with a clear view of most everything, seeing all, knowing all, while revealing nothing.

Hard to imagine this being the home of a character played by Denzel Washington. But into this bleak well of nothingness he strides, confident but encumbered, his mind poisoned by the witches’ promise. You know the story. A battle; a fit of treachery; a run-in for Macbeth and his great friend and fellow warrior Banquo (Bertie Carvel, whose brush-bristly eyebrows are worth an essay unto themselves) with the witches, who not only foretell the crown for Macbeth, but for Banquo’s sons as well. The men don’t take the odd encounter seriously, until the circumstances of that earlier treachery result in Macbeth coming one step closer to what the witches have promised. And then we’re off. Lady Macbeth receives word of what’s to come and, independently of her husband — who doesn’t exactly overexert himself trying to stop her — hatches a plan to kill the current king (Brendan Gleeson). 

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Familiarity does not damn this or any other promising approach to this play, because its circumstances are simply too strange. And Coen heightens that strangeness. Hunter, a master of physical theater — if Peter Jackson had cast her as Gollum he’d have saved millions on his CGI budget — opens the film in a fit of contortion, crawling over herself like a confused crab, limbs snagging on themselves. She recites the three witches’ lines with a care that makes each sorceress vocally distinct, yet captivates for making even this basic fact somewhat ambiguous. (Later, we see her reflection in a pool of water, confirming that she is, indeed, a one-woman triumvirate of mischief.) All of this is to say nothing of her crowing antics, the caws and croaks and utter animalism that accompany the image of her grasping some poor soldier’s discarded thumb betwixt her toes, mumbling the poetry of Shakespeare’s spooky premonitions. If not for adding a surprisingly spicy flash of potency to what follows, the performance would amount to nothing more than a sideshow. But in this Macbeth , she’s all the more useful for her actorly tricks — for her sense of the witches as tricksters above all. If the world of this movie is a snow globe being shaken up at the director’s will, Hunter’s witches are the flakes, whirling beyond even the creator’s control, coating everything, beholden to motions all their own.

Where Hunter is all the more otherworldly for being so fully human as an actor, Denzel Washington’s take on Macbeth is very much earthbound, flawed and soul-bearing in ways that can only be human. This isn’t The Tragedy of for no reason: Washington’s humanity reminds us of this much. So, for that matter, does that of the rest of the cast, ranging from Corey Hawkins’ Macduff to short but sweet turns from the likes of Ralph Ineson and Moses Ingram — all warm bodies thrown headlong into this tragic maw of nihilistic absence that Coen, in excess of Shakespeare, has devised. 

Washington of course stands out. His Macbeth is reminiscent of the everyman archetypes he’s grown so adept at over the years. This isn’t a man of grandiloquent emotion but, rather, a wary man, an aging warrior, whose desire for power proves so convincing precisely because Washington carries in him the weight and knowledge of a man who’s put in his time. Younger actors can’t convince us of this in the same way — hence a tendency, in some interpretations, to slip more quickly into a misguided bloodthirst. Macbeth has sometimes come off as a man too big for his britches — and punished for it accordingly. Washington’s natural easygoingness advances a different idea. Yes, this Macbeth is damned by his ambition. But at the heart of that ambition is the sense, at least at first, that he’s only really reaching for what he has rightfully earned.

In a way, this becomes a problem for the movie. Washington’s expressiveness, paired with the neatly trimmed script Coen has devised, nearly mitigates the language in some moments. The slaying of King Duncan (Gleeson) by Macbeth, and the subsequent slaying of Duncan’s attendants — also by Macbeth — is immediately followed by an abundance of explanation: Macbeth running the risk of exposing himself as the murderer with too many words, too much handwringing over his passions. Washington’s cool, collected performance to this point somehow makes this moment feel saggy with verbiage; the movie’s thriller-esque overtones aren’t always a welcome match for Shakespeare’s deft psychologizing. 

Washington also sets a high bar for McDormand, whose delivery doesn’t come quite as naturally. Strangely, even with Hunter skulking about and bending herself into a piece of human origami, McDormand’s is the performance that most stands out for feeling “actorly,” the down-homeness of her diction feeling more false here than it did in films like Nomadland and Three Billboards . Washington and McDormand have no chemistry — but this is a good thing, befitting of the couple’s childlessness and speaking, as it does, to a desire to grasp for a power that will necessarily fail to stay within the family. (It also proves an effective counterpoint to the warmth of Hawkins’ Macduff and Ingram’s Lady Macduff; if you know the play, you know what’s bound to happen there, and the charisma of these actors makes it that much sadder.)

In the grand scheme of things, this is the Macbeth you know, if not the Macbeth you love: Its outlook is a different flavor of bleak than the norm, which is welcome. The screws have been tightened just so, such that the delirious inner dramas of Shakespeare’s original play feel unmoored from anything like reality. Until reality comes crashing in: with fire and fog, and swordplay, and fits of emotion that clash against the stark, crisp beauty of its images. With the vast landscapes of Scotland so damningly obscured, and the action so hemmed in, one rightly begins to wonder what it’s all for — what there is, in this world, that could be worth so many betrayals, when anything like a future tense is so hard to imagine. To say that the movie feels empty by the end is not to criticize it. Truly — what is this all for? Other takes on Macbeth at least make power seem appealing. That’s not Coen’s game. And he’s made a movie that ultimately, and often wonderfully, hammers this home. The dread is real, even if the environs are not. 

As for the ostensible “fourth witch,” the movie’s prime meddler and secret power player: Suffice it to say that it’s in the character of Ross (played by the wonderfully suggestive Alex Hassell) that Coen’s movie makes its most intriguing intervention. Keep an eye on the slinking, spying curiosity of a man whose snaky sheath of an outfit suits his personality most capably. His is a presence most other takes on Macbeth have tended to take for granted; he’s a minor-ish character, in the scheme of things. But that’s the thing about schemes — and schemers. Fargo , Raising Arizona , No Country for Old Men , Burn After Reading : Coen, alongside his brother and usual collaborator Ethan, is no stranger to the pitfalls of so-called “best laid plans.” The Tragedy of Macbeth is Joel’s first outing on his own but, in this regard, he’s made a movie that suits the broader world of his work. That he’s done so most cogently through a character most other approaches to this play have barely noticed only makes it that much more thrilling.

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“The Tragedy of Macbeth,” Reviewed: Joel Coen’s Sanitized Shakespeare

Joel Coen’s “The Tragedy of Macbeth” is the kind of movie that a hero of the Coen brothers , Preston Sturges, mocked eighty years ago in his great film “ Sullivan’s Travels ,” about a famous comedy director who strains after relevance by turning his attention to a super-serious social drama. “Macbeth,” however, is more than a serious drama; it’s a ready-made showcase for inspired actors, and Coen’s cast is filled with some of the best. It’s a special form of cinematic torment when great performers are stuck in a misbegotten production, because the intrinsic pleasure of seeing them is overshadowed by a sense of waste, of artistry neglected by directorial willfulness or vanity. Denzel Washington, as Macbeth, and Frances McDormand, as Lady Macbeth, fit their performances to the movie’s narrow view of Shakespearean cinema, which reduces grandeur to petulance and poetry to decoration. The over-all effect is of a striving toward a high style that isn’t achieved—and that undercuts the mighty import of the play.

The movie is filmed in black-and-white because, you know, colors hadn’t been invented yet in Shakespeare’s time. There has been a revival of fine black-and-white filmmaking this year, as in Mike Mills’s “ C’mon C’mon ” and much of Wes Anderson’s “ The French Dispatch , ” where the abstracted format places the characters’ variegated talk in high relief. In “The Tragedy of Macbeth,” Coen, too, emphasizes language with his spare, stark sets and artificial, high-contrast lighting. Yet his focus on language is paradoxical, because his skillful reduction of the play ends up foregrounding the action and eclipsing Shakespeare’s rhetorical fancy. Coen transforms the play’s poetry into dialogue, spoken by actors who seem stranded with the task of merely delivering their lines. Coen sets out to normalize Shakespearean language, but he ends up going too far. His actors speak in conversational voices that, in spurning theatricality, also leave out nuanced expression. And Coen films them as human pillars frozen in place, line-dispensers staring straight ahead as he frames them with the frontal blandness of a network television program.

The sets are given more centrality and responsibility than the actors. The film’s décor—with its sharp lines, sharp edges, plain walls, high loops, and bright vistas—suggests the architecture imagined by de Chirico , and Coen makes use of its portals to fabricate German Expressionist effects of shadow and light. Greater attention and forethought appears to have gone into creating thin stripes of window-light than to the positioning and gesturing and diction of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth in the same frame. No current passes between this Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. They occupy the same room and the same space but not the same movie. McDormand isn’t guided to display a sufficiently ruthless temperament; her performance lacks command, urgency, rage, and madness. This Lady Macbeth is never as strong as when she orders subordinates about, and her mad scene comes off as an actor’s exercise. Washington seems to scale down his own performance to match. His calm, magisterial authority pervades the film from beginning to end, but he’s largely stuck in place as rigidly as the other actors. Macbeth’s martial bonhomie seems unruffled by conflict, untroubled by the weird sisters’ prophecy, unmoved by Lady Macbeth’s arachnid schemes. Washington’s at his best when he’s most casual, when sheer ordinariness breaks through the line-running, as in his spontaneous-seeming gesture, early on, of clapping Banquo on the shoulder.

It isn’t only the sets that are bare. The intellectual framework within which the movie is set is similarly insubstantial. Coen reconceives “Macbeth” as a stereotypical indie relationship drama, rather than a symphony of voices or a chamber work of contrapuntal dialectic. Fortunately, among the supporting cast, there are a few thrilling exceptions: Macduff (Corey Hawkins), Lady Macduff (Moses Ingram), and their son (Ethan Hutchison) reach a sublime pitch of expression, their conversational tones taut with passion. (Also, Kathryn Hunter delivers a fierce performance as all three witches that’s nonetheless subordinated to trickery.) The highlights of the film are the ones that most resemble conventional action sequences, but ones with piquant touches of staging, as when Macbeth duels with Siward (Richard Short) before murdering him with an offhand gesture. The climactic confrontation of Macbeth and Macduff, which takes place not on a battlefield but on a high and narrow walkway, is juiced with a combination of dramatic passion and martial precision. It falls apart, though, with a flourish of eye-rolling vulgarity, when Macduff slashes off Macbeth’s head and the dying king’s crown goes flying through the air in slow motion.

This is only one, and not the last, in a series of kitschy effects that runs throughout the film—including Macbeth ducking a trio of crows; Lady Macbeth burning her husband’s letter and watching the wind carry it aloft from the window to the stars; Macbeth misperceiving a door handle that’s shaped like a dagger to be a real one; and, most hilariously, mad Macbeth, observing the wood advancing toward Dunsinane, as a gust of wind opens the tall glass doors of his castle and showers him with a billow of leaves. These cheesy symbolic tricks take the place of a textured and unified directorial conception. Coen doesn’t make meaningful use of silences, gazes, pauses. He doesn’t conjure a teeming realm of battles and intrigues. His “Macbeth” is rattled-off Shakespeare with the rhetoric toned down and the classical references pruned so as not to send viewers scurrying to their footnotes. It’s a neat and clean medieval drama, a sanitized “Macbeth” in which the absence of ornament and tangle, the sharp and rational focus on clear action, is the mark of rigorous earnestness. Yet Coen’s straining for seriousness and yearning for importance breaks through to the other side with the howlers of unintentional comedy.

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