The Tragedy of Macbeth: Joel Coen and Denzel Deliver a Powerful 'Scottish Play' for the Present Day

By Karen Gordon

Rating: A

Joel Coen’s spare and faithful adaptation of Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of Macbeth is a Macbeth for the present day.

Led by performances by Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand, the production makes this story of treachery, murder and the psychological cost of crossing moral boundaries feel both era specific, and frighteningly modern. 

Shakespeare loyalists out there may be reassured to know that Coen has been faithful to the original text, thoughtfully trimming bits here and there, mostly for flow.  The words are Shakespeare’s. The one notable change he’s made is turning the three witches - a.k.a. The Weird Sisters -  into one oracle, played to chilling perfection by Kathryn Hunter. 

Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand as Macbeth and Lady, Shakespeare’s ultimate enablers.

Some people, not steeped in Shakespeare, might be concerned over whether that rich language will be a barrier.  But the film’s excellent cast handles the text well, giving it a modern enough delivery that’s fairly easy to follow. 

Joel Coen, along with his brother Ethan, has made a series of dark, and often darkly comic films. They’re crafty writers who are drawn to transgressive characters and storylines dealing with treachery and murder. They like to let their stories sprawl, with large casts, and multiple locations and motivations. 

But in making Macbeth, Coen has gone in the opposite direction. He’s shot the film in beautiful black-and-white under the eye of cinematographer Bruno Delbonnel.  

The sets are spare and cold. Stone walls surround the characters with little beyond what is functional for basic human needs, a table, or a bed. There is nothing to indicate that the rooms have ever held life or joy.  Even the scenes shot outside, are stark. 

The casting adds another interesting dimension. Denzel Washington as Macbeth, and Frances McDormand as Lady Macbeth, are older, in the upper end of what we’d call middle age.  Macbeth has been a loyal and effective general for King Duncan (Brendan Gleeson), and there’s no question in his mind at all that he’s going to be properly rewarded.

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So, when Duncan announces another as successor (his perceived-weak son Malcolm, played by Harry Melling), Washington ever so subtly registers the news with a quiet mix of shock and disappointment. You can see that the revelation has taken a piece out of him.    

This is one of Washington’s quietest and most nuanced performances. He’s such a powerful actor that he’s often cast in roles that take advantage of his force-of-nature quality, where you can feel his character’s underlying anger, ambition, or aggression.  

But in Macbeth, he pulls inward.   You get the sense that his character’s life has been about following a certain path. So when things don’t go as expected, this great general is devastated, but there’s something else there. He seems a bit lost.  As Washington plays him, maybe he’s been lost for a long time. 

McDormand’s Lady MacBeth is a complex woman at a certain stage of life. There are no children here, no sense of family. In this cold house, where she is stuck, one wonders what her life has been like.  

Lady MacBeth is often seen as a wildly ambitious woman pushing her husband towards immorality.  But in McDormand’s hands, her motivations and actions are subtler.  You can’t read much emotion on her face as she encourages her husband, oh so casually, to do the unthinkable.  There’s something deadened in her.   And, whatever has gone on in their relationship, in his past, in his psyche, it seems like he’s empty, dependent on her. There’s a sense she’s filled in places in him that are missing. 

The play is as relevant today as it was when Shakespeare wrote it. And Coen, his leads and other players in this diverse cast, do an excellent job of showing that the flaws in human behaviour that can lead to wreckage aren’t era specific. 

Macbeth isn’t just a story about power and murder, It’s a fabulous study of abdication of moral responsibility, of people who push each other to a point of being unable to stop themselves. Reality drains out of the circumstances and people are pushed on by a kind of greed that has no real purpose and offers no kind of satisfaction. It’s an emotional black hole.  

There’s one more thing that stuck with me as I was thinking about the film.

Joel Coen, decided to do this adaptation at the urging of Frances McDormand, who is also his wife. She had done a stage production of the play and wanted to do one for the screen. That might have been his motivation. But one of Macbeth’s most famous speeches suggests that Macbeth’s despair echoes themes that the Coens have explored in their movies. 

For me the Coen’s movies have always been a kind of Old Testament discussion on the meaning of one person’s life in a silent universe. Is there a God, and if so do we even matter to him or her? Or do we live in a Godless universe where our struggles and difficulties are all for naught? 

The characters may plot individually or together, but in the end, it comes down to one person facing themselves, their choices, their fate.  Is there a better way of saying it than the words Shakespeare put in Macbeth’s mouth at his moment of reckoning?:

“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.”

The Tragedy of MacBeth directed by Joel Coen, starring Denzel Washington, Frances McDormand and Brendan Gleeson. In theatres December 25th, 2021. On Apple+ January 14th, 2022