“It’s a special form of cinematic torment when great performers are stuck in a misbegotten production,” tnyfrontrow writes, “because the intrinsic pleasure of seeing them is overshadowed by a sense of waste.”
, ” 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.
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, 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.
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 , Lady Macduff , and their son reach a sublime pitch of expression, their conversational tones taut with passion.
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...
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