At the start of the pandemic I lost my movie-watching mojo. Sure movies were still coming out, but the fact that theaters were closed crushed my cinematic spirit. It’s taken me close to two years, but finally the mojo is back. Yeah baby, yeah!
So here comes the newest Lush and Todd series: Todd's Movie Review (with my specific review line titled ZB's Movie Review). Not exactly sure what this will be or where this will go, but the basic concept is the same as Album Review. It can be whatever you want: a pure film analysis, an essay, an op-ed, a quick couple of sentences, incoherent ramblings. Literally whatever comes to your mind after watching a film.
For my first installment, I figured there'd be no better place to start than The Bard himself. It's Joel Coen's The Tragedy of Macbeth (2021)
This was a super unique and enjoyable film. I’m admittedly not sharp when it comes to fully comprehending Shakespearean English, but there’s enough language to grasp where I can generally understand what’s going on. And I read the play in high school, so there’s a distant memory of the story as well. It was almost like watching a brilliant foreign film or a surrealist film. There’s confusion and disconnect, but as a viewer you recognize the greatness unfolding before you.
And that’s not a hard thing to see considering Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand are at the top of the call sheet and a Coen brother is in the director's chair. The emotion worn on both leads’ faces throughout is incredible. Their monologue and soliloquy pacing is masterful, even if I don’t fully get it line by line. There’s just something beautiful about Olde English done well. Something really poetic. And every now and then a few lines cut through and hit profoundly.
As for Joel Coen, him and his team have done an amazing job at creating an unforgettable and harrowing atmosphere. The production designers most certainly deserve their Academy Award nomination, as does the cinematographer Bruno Delbonnel. Each scene is shot on a stage and the whole movie is in black-and-white, which gives the film a Studio Era feel that fits like a glove. It’s clearly an homage to that time and I think the choice to go simple as opposed to something grand and budgetarily bloated was the right choice. Especially considering this is a by-the-book Shakespeare adaptation and not some twisted, bastardized, Hollywood profit-maximization production. Hell, that fact alone is probably why I enjoyed this so much. It’s like going back in time, before the blockbuster machine took hold of the system, when classic tales were first being retold for the screen.
There were a few other surprises that took hold of me. One was the performance by Kathryn Hunter, who played the witches and the old man. I’d never heard of her, but holy hell was she frighteningly good. She’s clearly a stage actor, and this movie's closeness to traditional theatre made it perfect for her. I was also blown away by the use of shadows and light. Like I said before, there was something very surreal about the whole piece. As if it were a dream, or a nightmare. It didn’t feel like it was of this world. And I think the use of darkness and light and shapes brought it to another dimension. It evoked the surrealist classics of old. Also the use of water and blood as a symbol of the ticking clock was another mesmerizing factor within the film. As soon as Macbeth commits his horrid crime, the dripping blood signifies that his time is limited. He will soon descend into madness and tyranny.
I also couldn’t help but think of the madness our own leaders display in today's world. With all the insanity surrounding the tensions between Russia and the United States over Ukraine, it was impossible for me not to relate those war games to the ones that Macbeth played. This story, and this movie by extension, does a world-class job at showing just how dangerous power can be. It highlights how a thirst for power can corrupt the mind into something unrecognizable. And the fact that 400 years later these same themes and motifs can be so easily applied to current political affairs is pretty depressing. Progress certainly has been made, but man remains unquenched.
In the end, while I’m not a Shakespeare dork by any means, this was an awesome telling of a legendary tale. I think any true movie buff will appreciate the artsy, subversive aesthetic and find it to be a worthwhile watch.
- ZB James
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