Review of MacBeth (AppleTV+)

 It's been awhile. 

I haven't been inspired. 

Till today's home matinee of Joel Coen's The Tragedy of MacBeth. 

To begin, I can remember seeing two big-time stage productions of the Scottish play, one in Stratford (ON) and one at Shakespeare's Globe in London.  Neither made me want to see another.

But Coen's vision of the play, obviously on film, is a whole different thing: it is fast-paced, inspired, and absolutely visually stunning (the black-and-white seems a great choice). 

I think I can assume we all know the play: it is famous (rightly) as a study in ambition and madness, with a dash of the supernatural and a big splash of the bloody.   Yes, something wicked this way comes. 

Coen's version has the great performances of Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand (who is well-known to be Coen's spouse) as the principle couple, with a host of other people giving quality performances.  Coen did an admirable job of getting the best out of everybody.

But, despite the quality of Washington and McDormand, it is the visual aspect of the movie that makes it so...okay, "dramatic."  From the opening scene, appearing through a fog, finishing with ravens (a recurring part of the original play) flying into your face, to the near-ending of the MacDuff-MacBeth duel, you keep saying "wow" as the scenes flick past. 

MacBeth's castle is no ancient medieval thing, but instead a more neo-Romanesque structure, with curved arches and open ceilings (that allow in rain in the important central murder scene), to floors that turn into pools, and windows that emit, or admit, those squawky ravens, the place reverberates with eeriness that sharpens that undertone of the script. 

Another wonderful feature of the film is how Coen and the actors have found something new in the famous lines.  We all know MacBeth's "Tomorrow" soliloquy but Washington (surely given the movements and setting prodded by Coen) turns the iambic pentameter into something less smooth, more halting, more gritty and full of thought and pain on his part.  Bravo!

The black-and-white is great, though one wonders if maybe doing the rather trite thing of making the (vast) blood red wouldn't have made it just that much gorier.  

One wonders about geography.  It is famously "the Scottish play," but anyone who has spent much time in Scotland will not recognize the scenery as such.  The opening scene, set on sand, looks like nowhere in Scotland, and the castle doesn't, and even as they say "we cross the heather," well, it's not heather.  

This is nitpicking when it all works so well.  In Coen's version, this isn't about Scotland, it is about people -- ambitious, bloody people.  And, boy is it good stuff.