Why Lady Macbeth is literature’s most misunderstood villain
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That fateful choice, in Lady Macbeth’s case, may be best understood as that of a woman navigating a strongly patriarchal world. If women had ambitions in early modern England, they mostly had to accomplish them through men, and there’s a strong sense that Lady Macbeth missed an opportunity to achieve greatness both because of her sex and her husband – Macbeth might have status on the battlefield but has less so in court. Her questioning of his manly courage (“Art thou afeard?”) cannot simply be viewed as emasculation but an indication that she could have married a man with more political power. “There is a really interesting theme that there’s a different tragedy for Lady Macbeth when she’s [played] older – she could have easily been queen,” Whyman says. “[Shakespare is] consistently curious about what it is to be a female leader and he keeps putting these guys up with deep flaws, and then suggesting there’s a woman close to them who could have done it better. Of course, he was also living through a time where the idea of a queen was very potent.” Whyman points to Hermione in The Winter’s Tale as another of Shakespeare’s women who suffers at the hands of a weak-minded husband. The virtuous Queen of Sicily is falsely accused of infidelity by King Leontes and is forced to stand trial: “Queen Hermione is treated appallingly [but] she would have led the country brilliantly.
King James I might have been the British sovereign when Macbeth was published but his predecessor, Elizabeth I, was an obvious influence on Shakespeare. Upon her ascension to the throne, the monarch challenged gender roles; she refused to submit to marriage – arguing she was “already bound unto a husband, which is the kingdom of England” – while clinging to her feminine identity in her aesthetic and various speeches, describing her subjects as her “children” for example. But she also displayed the royal traits (considered masculine because of the traditionally male hierarchy) of active agency and decision making, and was referred to using royal male descriptors, like “princely” and “Prince of Light” , as well as being classified as “king” in Parliamentary statute for political purposes. However, where Elizabeth I embraced political androgyny and reigned for 45 years, Lady Macbeth unsexes herself and loses her way. “She thinks the only way to get success is to follow a set of rules that are patriarchal,” says Whyman. “She’s not a kind of power-hungry, man impersonator – she’s wholly in her skin, but she does think the only way to have agency in the world is to do this terrible deed and she’s quite wrong about that. If she held onto her morals, so her femininity in that sense, it wouldn’t have happened.”
Shakespeare was miles ahead when it came to female representation and Lady Macbeth is a character that has too frequently been painted in a two-dimensional light. Had she been afforded more scenes in the play, her motivations might not have appeared so ambiguous to narrow-minded viewers. As it is, Lady M exits the play after her sleepwalking scene and in act five scene seven is reported as dead, evidently by suicide if Malcolm’s comment that she “by self and violent hands took off her life” is to be believed. But Coen complicates things by adding a sequence involving Lady Macbeth and nobleman Ross (Alex Haskell) that suggests even more foul play might be involved. Did she throw herself down the stairs – either because the guilt was too much or as an act of atonement – or was she pushed by Ross as revenge for her husband’s order to murder his cousin Lady MacDuff? That’s up to the viewer to decide. What is clear, is that Macbeth cares for his wife until the end and Coen presents this by having Washington’s tragic hero looking down upon her laying at the bottom of the fateful staircase, staggering slightly as the pain washes over him. The one constant in this adaptation is their love for one-another.
McDormand joins a welcome list of women bringing enough depth and layers to this formidable character to combat 400 years of gross misunderstandings that say more about those interpreters than the multifaceted literary figure Shakespeare created. Lady Macbeth is a timeless, tragic heroine who should be cherished not scorned. “It’s unhelpful to portray her as wicked or to suggest that because she hasn’t got a child she’s, in some ways, hollow and barren and inevitably evil,” says Whyman. “She’s not a villain; she’s complex, she’s curious – we should admire her.”
The Tragedy of Macbeth is available from Friday internationally on Apple TV+
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‘The Tragedy of Macbeth’: Joel Coen’s Shakespeare adaptation looks unlike any other
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Thomas Page , CNN Written by
A power-hungry Scot strides down a corridor, murder on his mind. Is this another Macbeth adaptation I see before me? Undeniably, yes, but Joel Coen’s take on Shakespeare’s age-old tale looks unlike any other.
It doesn’t hurt to have acting powerhouses Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand on board as Lord and Lady Macbeth, but the setting Coen places them in also commands attention. Shot in black-and-white in the boxy Academy ratio, we’re transported into an uncanny world of castles sculpted out of light and shadow in angles sharp enough to draw blood.
Displacing the audience out of time and modern cinematic convention, “The Tragedy of Macbeth” looks as if it could be 100 years old – closer to a stage play and, at times, more a dream (or nightmare) than real life. Like if you reached out to touch it, your hand would pass right through.
Utilizing the latest technologies, the film’s backward-looking, forward-thinking production design comes courtesy of Stefan Dechant, whose eclectic CV includes “Avatar,” “True Grit” and “Jurassic Park.”
Dechant joined the film after Coen, cinematographer Bruno Debonel and McDormand (producer and Coen’s wife) had bandied about ideas for close to a year. “I in no way walked into this project and said, ‘I got two words for you: ‘German Expressionism,’” he recalled, laughing. “I didn’t walk up to Bruno and say, ‘Black-and-white, baby, what do you think?’”
“From the very beginning, (Coen) mentioned that he didn’t want to deny that the text was created as a play (and) theatrical construct,” he added. “We had no interest in making it as a naturalist film. He was not interested in going down the route (Roman) Polanski went,” citing the director’s 1971 film, shot around the British Isles.
Frances McDormand as Lady Macbeth in a scene from “The Tragedy of Macbeth.” Credit: Courtesy of Apple TV+ and A24
Simplifying the frame
Inspiring references were plastered all over an office in the form of 3-by-5-inch prints of film stills, architecture shots and photography of Debonel’s own making. The keystone image was by photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto of the Luis Barragán house in Mexico City. Built in 1948, the late architect’s former home – now a UNESCO World Heritage site – is captured in the photo as an assembly of clean lines and hard surfaces softened ever so slightly by the focus.
“It became a benchmark for me to understand how abstract we were going to get,” Dechant said.
The collaborators also looked to the films of Carl Dreyer, Robert Mitchum, F.W. Murnau, Fritz Lang, Alfred Hitchcock and DW Griffith for inspiration, as well as sketches by avant-garde theatre designer Edward Gordon Craig.
Left-right: A film still from F.W. Murnau’s “Sunrise” (1927) and Alex Hassell as Ross in a still from Joel Coen’s “The Tragedy of Macbeth.” Credit: Alamy/Stefan Dechant/Apple TV+
“The through line was simplifying the frame,” he explained. “It was almost like creating a haiku of imagery. It was, ‘How could we reduce it to the least amount of elements and still be evocative and immediate?’”
Macbeth’s ascent to the throne takes him from a battle camp to his castle in Inverness and ultimately to a castle in Dunsinane. Coen asked Dechant not to think of a castle, but the “idea of a castle.” How this manifests transports the film into the realm of the metatextual.
The raw edges and sparse set decoration are a nod to stage design, but the incompleteness of these spaces also become an extension of Lord and Lady Macbeth. These are characters who have imagined themselves on the throne, but never fleshed out the details of their reign. The dearth of imagination is reflected in bare walls, cold floors and high ceilings, these characters dwarfed by their station – a hollow castle for a hollow crown.
“There’s a haunting, empty quality,” said Dechant. “I think that Joel was probably working at that level, in terms of (Inverness is) not a home, because they can’t have heirs. And then you go to (Dunsinane) and it’s ill-fitting. There’s still an emptiness. It’s only one man seeking power, and his wife.”
Making the old new again
A montage of illustrations and 3-D virtual models of sets created for “The Tragedy of Macbeth.” Credit: Courtesy Stefan Dechant/Apple TV+ and A24
Sets were designed using 3-D computer modeling, allowing Coen and Debonnel to run virtual walk-throughs of scenes and work out camera angles and movements before they were constructed. Some sets were roughly marked out on a soundstage or built with foam blocks and augmented to serve the text.
Dechant recalled McDormand pacing a mock corridor in preparation for a pivotal murder scene, reciting Macbeth’s corresponding soliloquy as she walked to make sure the space was long enough. Nailing that scene – and one of Shakespeare’s most famous passages – was vital, especially as production designer and director had conspired on a new interpretation.
The vision of a dagger Macbeth sees before him in most interpretations of the play appears here in the form of a door handle to his victim’s chamber, before he takes up his own blade. Dechant said Coen had shown him a 1903 portrait of banker JP Morgan sitting holding the arm of a chair – except in the light, it looked like Morgan was actually holding a dagger. The production designer played around with sculpting a metal door handle to achieve a similar effect. (Dechant eventually left the set with the final product and a chunk of the door as a souvenir.)
Left: Portrait of JP Morgan. Right: A film still from “Tragedy of Macbeth.” Credit: Alamy/Stefan Dechant/Apple TV+
Another departure Coen makes is through his casting of stage star and contortionist Kathryn Hunter to play all three of the story’s iconic witches. At the height of the film’s inventiveness, when the witches return to Macbeth and recite their famous song , they do so inside Dunsinane castle – perched atop rafters in a spartan room – as water (all digital, admitted the production designer) floods the space.
“(The room) has no historic relevance,” said Dechant. “It was designed for one purpose: to be a cauldron.”
Kathryn Hunter as the three witches in “The Tragedy of Macbeth.” Credit: Courtesy of Apple TV+ and A24
Dechant said two versions of the apparition chamber were built, one full height for stunt performers, and one with just the rafters for Hunter’s close-ups. Credit: Jason T Clark/Apple TV+ and A24
There were other touches too: When Macbeth sees the ghost of his friend in a hallway, Dechant designed every arch to be “off balance, because so is Macbeth in his madness.” The fateful coming of the enemy to Dunsinane is foreshadowed by Dechant in the throne room, where columns were laid out with the same proportions as a colonnade of trees the invading forces would later pass through. The texture of the sets – highlighted by the absence of color – were designed to harmonize with costume designer Mary Zophres’ work.
Dechant, despite his proven track record, described his work in purely collaborative terms. He is quick to give credit, whether to Coen, Debonnel, the set decorators who painted shadow onto his sets to make the lighting pop, or the matte artists who painted landscapes to be inserted in post-production.
“Imagine if you came to work and everything looked like a piece of art when you walked into it?” he asked, smiling, looking like he still couldn’t believe his luck.
The crossroads set – the largest in the film – took over Studio 16 at the Warner Bros. lot. Credit: Jason T Clark/Apple TV+ and A24
“The Tragedy of Macbeth” is available on Apple TV+ on January 14.
Add to Queue: Five genius interpretations of Shakespeare
“Throne of Blood” (1957)
Akira Kurosawa transported “Macbeth” to feudal Japan for a epic take on the warrior’s rise and fall. Toshiro Mifune and Isuzu Yamada star as the leads and dial the emotion all the way up. (See also: “Ran” [1985], Kurosawa’s take on “King Lear,” and “The Bad Sleep Well” [1960], his noirish adaptation of “Hamlet.”)
“10 Things I Hate About You” (1999)
Heath Ledger singing from the bleachers. Julia Styles’ teary poetry reading. Joseph Gordon-Levitt annoying everyone in sight. Gil Junger’s take on “The Taming of the Shrew,” with its American high school setting, had it all.
“Richard III” (1995)
Richard Loncraine’s adaptation takes the rise of a bad king and imagines it as a fascist coup in 1930s Britain. It’s worth a watch to see Ian McKellen letting it rip as one of Shakespeare’s most dastardly characters and its brilliant use of location (Battersea Power Station stands in for the Battle of Bosworth).
“Maqbool” (2003)
Another “Macbeth,” another original take. Vishal Bhardwaj set the play in Mumbai’s underground world of crime, while the late Irrfan Khan brought a great world-weariness to the troubled leader. Comparisons to “The Godfather” would not be misplaced.
“Chimes At Midnight” (1965)
Orson Welles shifted the focus from the royals in “Henry IV” and put the limelight on Sir John Falstaff. Welles certainly looked the part as the knight and troublemaker, but gave him a cunning edge too. And it wasn’t the last film to ramp up the character’s prominence (see: David Michôd’s 2019 film, “The King”).
Worth Watching: ‘Ray Donovan’ Last Stand, Denzel Is ‘Macbeth,’ ‘After Life’ Final Season, A Real ‘Scream’
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What matters most in this feature-length sequel is that it represents Ray Donovan: The Ending—something of which fans were deprived when the series was abruptly canceled after seven seasons. Picking up from 2020’s bloody cliffhanger, the movie depicts a final reckoning between the moody fixer Ray (star and co-writer Liev Schreiber) and his wayward father Mickey (Jon Voight). Flashbacks that are a lot more satisfying than in last year’s Sopranos prequel The Many Saints of Newark feature their younger selves—Chris Gray as Ray and Bill Heck as a swaggering, charismatic Mickey—as they fatefully clash, setting up the schism that would fuel the series. (See the full review.)
The cast of ‘The Tragedy of Macbeth’ discuss collaborative atmosphere during rehearsals
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Weird Sisters? Make That Twisted Sisters
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The voice: a low, guttural rasp, it’s the aural equivalent of slithering, the wheezy lamentation of a leprechaun long past his sell-by date. In a trailer for Joel Coen’s “The Tragedy of Macbeth,” it speaks the only words heard. As Macbeth (Denzel Washington) emerges from a swirl of fog and Lady Macbeth (Frances McDormand) schemes, the voice hisses the prophecy that begins, “By the pricking of my thumbs . . .”
Kathryn Hunter Illustration by João Fazenda
On a recent afternoon, the voice—which belongs to the English actress and longtime cigarette smoker Kathryn Hunter, who plays all three witches in the film, which will stream on Apple TV+ starting this week—came crackling over the phone, from her apartment in London. “I’m sixty-four, so I was born at a time when smoking was considered immoral but not unhealthy,” Hunter explained.
Her parents, who were Greek, named her Aikaterini Hadjipateras, when she was born, in New York, but she changed her name later, when the head of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art asked her, “So, Kathryn, do you wish to play the full canon, or just gypsies?” A former artistic associate at the Royal Shakespeare Company, Hunter was a veteran member of Complicité, the London-based troupe known for physical theatre, co-founded by Hunter’s husband, Marcello Magni. Her knack for physical transformation has seen the five-foot-tall dynamo playing a variety of nonhuman roles, not to mention Richard III, Timon of Athens, and Lear, the last of which she’ll reprise this summer, at the Globe.
Although Hunter has known Coen and McDormand socially for thirty years, she had never worked with them prior to “Macbeth.” A few months before shooting started, she met up with the pair in a London hotel room to discuss her approach to playing the witches. Hunter, who describes herself as “quite bendy,” stood on a coffee table, pulled a pair of black panty hose over her head, and started impersonating a crow. “Joel would say, ‘Keep that shape. I like that shape. Take the arms back, lift the elbow.’ He was choreographing, in a way.”
Hunter’s first scene in the movie has her squatting in the sand (no panty hose), where she alternately squawks, clutches a sailor’s severed thumb in her gnarled toes, and twists her right arm all the way behind her head. Imagine a litigious raven who has done a lot of yoga. “Some people at a screening asked me, ‘Is it C.G.I., what you do with your arms?’ So I did for them what I do in the film with my arms, and they said, ‘Oh, God!’ It was quite funny.” All the thrashing around in the sand has paid off: last month, the New York Film Critics Circle gave Hunter its best-supporting-actress award.
“Hold on—we’re just supposed to schlep back to Antarctica now?” Facebook
Shopping Cartoon by Mark Thompson
“The body tells a story as much as the text,” Hunter said. She would know: while a student at RADA, she was in a car crash that broke her back, shattered her elbow, and crushed her feet. She spent months in a wheelchair, and her doctors thought that she might never walk again. She now sees the ordeal as a gift in disguise: “Somehow the limitations provoked me to explore more.” This tenacity has made her a favorite among theatre directors. She has worked with Peter Brook six times, and Julie Taymor’s willingness to put on “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” at Brooklyn’s Theatre for a New Audience, in 2013, was contingent on Hunter’s playing Puck.
For her “weird sisters” research, Hunter studied people with multiple-personality disorder, and also crows, which are symbols of divination. She also consulted a modern-day witch. “I asked her to give me a simple spell to keep the company safe,” Hunter said. “Denzel told me he believes in the power of prophecy and the power of blessings, so, before going on set, I would do a ritual to keep him and the company safe.” She went on, “But afterward I thought, Maybe it didn’t work, because COVID came along.” (Coen had shot seventy per cent of the film when the pandemic forced the production to pause, in March, 2020.)
“Some people might be expecting more of a Coen-brothers modernization, but I think Joel has done a wonderful thing to let the language speak,” Hunter said, finishing her thought with one of her preferred sentence-enders, a wheedling “Wouldn’t you agree?” (She’s also prone, when unable to remember something, to tapping her forehead and saying, “Come on, brain!”) In Coen’s adaptation, Hunter also plays the Old Man outside Macbeth’s castle, which suggests that the witches have shape-shifted into an old codger. It’s the Old Man who, referencing first the darkness of the sky and then Duncan’s murder, says, “ ’Tis unnatural / Even like the deed that’s done.”
“It’s amazing that Shakespeare was so concerned with nature,” Hunter said. “He’s saying, When man is out of kilter, as it were, it’s reflected in nature. How prescient is that?” ♦