In his second feature film to have its world premiere on a digital platform after 2018’s The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, and the first he has made without his brother Ethan, Joel Coen decides to join the long list of filmmakers producing an adaptation of “the play Scottish” by William Shakespeare. So, for a week on Apple TV we can find The Tragedy of Macbeth (2021, United States), an abridged and nightmarish version in which Coen offers us one of the most cinematographic adaptations that have been seen of such an immortal work.
The plot, which is about excessive ambition and its fateful consequences, remains intact. True, some dialogues have changed, some scenes have either been omitted or have been reinterpreted. Even some characters have gained weight while others have been decreased. But, despite these details, I would dare to say that this is one of the most faithful versions of the work.
One that even takes advantage of its “artificial” staging to immerse us right in the moral dilemma in which its characters live: the kingdom is a ruin. And for that ruin is it worth killing or dying? Dilemma that, as it is pointed out at a key moment in the work: “Things that begin with evil, only take hold with evil.”
The skillful Macbeth, who this time is not a brash and ambitious young man, but a mature and caustic nobleman who has given his life to preserve the peace, and who is played by Denzel Washington, returns to his castle after achieving another victory for King Duncan (Brendan Gleeson).
He is accompanied by the faithful Banquo (Bertie Carvel) when he meets one or more women. She or they are the Hecate, here played superbly by Kathryn Hunter. She or they communicate some prophecies to travelers. The first is that Macbeth is called by a title he does not yet possess, and is then told that he will be king. While Baquo is called the “father of a king”. That encounter and those words are enough to “plant” ambition in Macbeth’s head.
So many battles won, so many scars on his body and so many years dedicated to the cause should be compensated, he thinks. And what better way to do it than with the crown of the kingdom of Ireland. And when that first title predicted by Hecate comes to him because the one who carried it is accused of treason, he takes seriously the prophecy that he will be the future king. Only when Duncan makes public that the heir to the throne will be his soft son Malcolm (Harry Melling) and not Macbeth, he understands that in order to achieve this he must act against those values and codes that he has defended all those years.
And who supports, advises and even encourages him to achieve such a cause is his wife, played by Frances McDormand. Thus, while the betrayals, key scenes and well-known dialogues make an appearance, little by little those dreamlike and pasty images captured by Burno Delbonnel remind us that when we let ourselves be carried away by ambition for power, we are only facing: “ … a tale told by an idiot… Full of sound and fury, meaning nothing.”
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