Review of The Tragedy of Macbeth (2021) by Everett — 09 Jan 2022

Filming a play isn't easy. Filming a Shakespearean play is even harder. On that score, it succeeds better than most, moving quickly and stylizing the set in a way that lends a certain artistic integrity.

Yet the pace and the style are the very characteristics that constrain it. It feels hurried, pared down (it was), as if savoring the richness of the original would be asking too much of a contemporary audience. Ditto the style, which brought more attention to itself and less to the substance of the tale — and the characters. It became tiresome, like watching someone show off.

Across the board, the acting was excellent, of course most significantly so by Washington and McDormand. Yet they seemed constrained. I wonder if direction was to blame for my biggest letdown in the film: Macbeth's very famous "Out Out"speech near the end. I was astonished that, despite the fact that Macbeth delivers it immediately after finding out the most tragic news, he hurries through it with very little inflection in lines that beg lingering, and varying expression on profound as well as personal levels.

If Mr. Washington delivered it so perfunctorily because he was told to, then what a waste. I would love to see what he would've done with it on his own.