“The Tragedy of Macbeth” in the cinema and on Apple TV +: Schall und Wahn – Kultur

Ravens, it is said, have a close relationship with the realm of the dead. With three of these scavengers, not with the famous witches, Joel Coen begins his film adaptation of “The Tragedy of Macbeth”, one of the shortest and bloodiest works by William Shakespeare. The black birds circling slowly over a battlefield that is shrouded in deep, white mist like a gracious shroud. The famous lines of the witches can only be heard off-screen, like whispering ghosts.

Slowly a limping, bleeding soldier drags himself up into the white nothing. He has news for Duncan, King of Scotland, who is standing in a heavy leather suit with an entourage in front of a medieval tent camp, like a statue from an old Wagner production. Macbeth was victorious, reports the soldier, he defeated the rebels, even massacred them. Ross, another vassal, reports that the traitor, the Thane of Cawdor, has also been defeated. “Great joy!” Exclaims Malcolm, the king’s son, obliviously. But Duncan doesn’t seem to feel any joy, he reacts calmly and appoints Macbeth as the new Thane in absentia. When he turns away, his gaze goes to the overcast sky, in whose haze the ravens are just disappearing.

The view of the ravens would have been difficult to implement in a theater, and yet it is immediately clear: what you see here is not only a film, but also a stage. A stage on which Shakespeare’s play is performed, close to the text, with naturalistic theatrical equipment. There is hardly a figure who is not in a rough leather doublet and waving swords as if it were the Salzburg Festival and the year 1968, if not earlier. The pictures are black and white, the format almost square like in early cinema. Even the title lettering is strangely nested, ornate and decorated with a leaf, as if the fairy tale king had made it personally in his castle’s own printing press.

At first glance, that looks very old-fashioned, but don’t let that fool you, because this is a Coen film. Although this is the first time Joel Coen is directing without his brother Ethan, backward-looking nostalgia is the last thing on his mind. The images such as those by Ingmar Bergman or Carl Theodor Dreyer and the stage gestures of the prewar period are intended to alienate and unsettle, provoke a new look at the regicide and ghost seer Macbeth – and take Shakespeare completely at his word.

The script version and its cinematic implementation were created with almost academic meticulousness. In addition to the proverbial lines, which of course should not be missing in any production, many of the often very subtle motifs in the original text have been translated into film. The witches (who sometimes only appear as a wrinkled old woman speaking in three voices) are associated with ravens, with dark wings and croaking voices, and therefore already present at the beginning. Some figures were merged or their verses were assigned to different ones, but mostly out of the hints in the piece itself that there might be a connection between the figures.

And this at the same time old-fashioned and modern style looks simply fantastic: Forres, the castle of the Macbeths, made of angular concrete and with sharp incidence of light looks like an Edward Hopper nightmare or a megalomaniac Bauhaus fantasy. The contrasts are so great that every hair, every fold and every crooked tooth stands out like a dagger on the faces of the figures when they recite the text, which Coen shortened and rearranged, but essentially left it true to the original.

Language sharply illuminates the landscapes of the soul

The simplicity of the images gives the language a lot of space, and their sharpness illuminates the emotional landscapes of the characters down to the last detail. Macbeth is a complex study of madness and malice, egoism and megalomania, not as a warning against evil deeds – the abysses of the characters are savored far too much for that – but as a sounding out of the possibilities. Macbeth is evil, scheming, and sly so that we don’t have to be.

And maybe that’s the attraction that so many directors see in the play right now. It is currently being played in many theaters in Germany, Anna Netrebko’s opera version of Giuseppe Verdi’s play has just premiered at La Scala in Milan, and ex-Bond Daniel Craig will be performing Macbeth on Broadway next year. Works well at a time when even small, selfish violations of pandemic hygiene rules have the potential to result in death for yourself and for others.

The Macbeth at Joel Coen is played by Denzel Washington, who becomes more and more entangled in the web of intrigue, betrayal and bloodshed after the witches foretold him the crown and he helped this prophecy with a dagger. The good-natured look and tone of Washington contrasts irritatingly with the warrior staggering close to the edge of madness and gives something strange to the violence and deceit.

The alien has crept into this man, who actually wins over his fellow men easily, like the thick fog or a slow-acting poison. The impetus for murder and violence is anyway Lady Macbeth, who seeks a kind of revenge on the world and challenges her new husband, referring to his potency, to take the lead in the state. If possible, also with force. Frances McDormand plays it with an obvious cruelty, as if she were taking inventory at Forres Castle and not starting one murder after another. A woman who has nothing to lose because she expects nothing more, a figure like a threat.

Both McDormand and Washington break their game again and again with recitative moments in which it becomes clear: Although two Hollywood stars act here, this is still Shakespeare and his text should have room for effect, even if it is performed by Oscar winners. This then undermines some viewing habit, because you have to listen more than see in order to keep up, empathize more than let yourself be sprinkled. In today’s cinema machinery, which doesn’t want to leave anything to chance or even to the viewer, that’s almost a provocation.

Like the deliberately old-fashioned and artificial staging that doesn’t do exactly what films usually try: to show a world that looks as real as possible. Everything seems made that way, so staged, because the characters perceive the world this way: a stale imitation of what once was and was good, but is no longer. “It is a tale / told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, / signifying nothing.” It is a story told by an idiot, full of madness and madness, which means nothing, says one of Macbeth’s famous monologues. Violence has made this world what it is. Joel Coens Macbeth and his lady take revenge on her because she has become hollow and empty, fleeting like ravens in the fog.

The Tragedy of Macbeth, USA 2021 – Director: Joel Coen. Book: Joel Coen based on William Shakespeare. Camera: Bruno Delbonnel. Starring: Denzel Washington, Frances McDormand, Bertie Carvel. 105 minutes. Theatrical release: December 26th, 2021. From January 14th, 2021 on Apple TV +.