Review of Lady Macbeth (2016) by Matt C — 20 Jul 2017

2017 in film seems to have two commonalities: headstrong women and lots of disappointments. Lady Macbeth is both of these descriptors in one movie, so in that way, it's a good encapsulation of the year as a whole.

Here's something that I should like, what with its languid pacing and technical excellence, but director William Oldroyd and writer Alice Birch are so intent on making a movie that's raw and stripped down that they strip the content of almost all of its humanity, leaving the audience with some very good performances and lots of glacial pacing.

It's nice to have a movie like this, but not so much when it doesn't make me feel anything at all for such a decent amount of its runtime. Based on Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District by Nikolai Leskov, it follows Katherine (Florence Pugh), a woman stuck in a lifeless and coercive marriage with a man twice his age, Alexander (Paul Hilton).

As she begins an affair with a worker on their estate named Sebastian (Cosmo Jarvis), their relationship implicates those around them in bouts of sex and murder. As a piece that focuses on the effects of isolation and objectification of a woman and also seems to have aspirations to look at racial politics within this society, Lady Macbeth really could have been great, but it's just so dully executed.

In fact, it leaves me with not much to say because the film, told from the protagonist's perspective, is meant to be as calculating as she can be-and as cold and cruel as she can come off as well.

The issue with such a perspective is that the movie wants to have the audience look at everything with a slightly different viewpoint after all is said and done, but the movie simply isn't interesting enough to instigate analysis in hindsight.

The film's intentions are clear, but Oldroyd and Birch don't develop the time or characters enough, leading them to come off as shadows of the complex humans that they could have been. It's fascinating to pointedly tell a story where character arcs are essentially moot, but unless the substance is brilliant and groundbreaking and constantly engaging, it won't have the effect that the filmmakers intended.

Such is the issue here, and it's thoroughly disappointing. Besides this, the production design, costumes, and restraint on display on each of the performances-namely Pugh-have an allure to them that help the movie stay afloat at times.

It's shot beautifully and the lack of music really helps build a sense of loneliness and subdued tension at times. Again, these positives are chipped away by the aforementioned negatives for a vast majority of the last 55 minutes, and this movie is only 89 minutes including credits.

It's aspirations are commendable, but there isn't enough here in content or execution. In that way, it's much more of My Cousin Rachel than The Beguiled, and the failures of the former two demonstrate the pitfalls of one-note filmmaking-and this is coming from a Todd Solondz and Sofia Coppola fan.

5.6/10, meh, C, average, etc.