Frances McDormand, Coen’s wife and creative partner here, reprises her role from the stage as Lady Macbeth. In a stroke of brilliant casting, Coen enlists Denzel Washington as the ambitious thane, who learns of his inevitable crown and then proceeds to cut through friends and competition to attain it. Made without his brother, Ethan, the film eschews most of the idiosyncrasies and ironies associated with the Coens’ work in favor of a stark, black-and-white vision in the squared Academy aspect ratio, evoking the prisonlike fate of its protagonist. As dramaturgy goes, Joel Coen’s The Tragedy of Macbeth distinguishes itself with its elaborately conceived and condensed version of Shakespeare’s shortest, bloodthirstiest play. Orson Welles adapted several Shakespeare plays to the screen, usually employing spare sets to focus on the actors, editing, and camerawork. By contrast, a minimalist approach has also worked well. When Kenneth Branagh turned Hamlet into a four-hour masterpiece in 1996, he spared no expense, but his cast’s towering performances matched the elaborate production design. If the filmmaking calls too much attention to itself, the Bard’s dialogue and story suffer. Many directors have translated Shakespeare to film, and the results vary depending on the balance between form and drama.
