#The Tragedy Of Macbeth Renews Shakespeare As An A24 Horror Film By Joel Coen

“The Tragedy of Macbeth” is a striking evocation of Shakespeare as horror, one that is revelatory in how it forges a new appreciation for the power of the Bard’s words. An atmosphere of foreboding pervades the film right from its opening seconds, where Kathyrn Hunter toggles between different vocal registers over a black screen, first whispering, then going guttural in a manner redolent of Mercedes McCambridge’s demon-voice in “The Exorcist.”

From there, Coen reels us into a mist-shrouded dreamscape, where crows circle overhead and A24 regular Ralph Ineson trudges across the sand. Hunter’s three-in-one witch contorts her body in unnatural ways, more Gollum or Gerasene than woman, with her other identities — the two additional “weird sisters” — appearing only as silhouettes and reflections in the water.

Alex Hassell elevates the character of Ross to a more prominent, Littlefinger-esque manipulator. The interplay between light and shadow heightens the mood, as does Carter Burwell’s score, a portentous mix of violins and bells, each knell of which summons us to hell, to paraphrase the protagonist.

Other parts of the musical and aural texture can only be described via impressions: footsteps, foghorn drones, faucet-like drips, and thunderous knocks. Burwell has scored many of the Coen Brothers’ films, but in “No Country for Old Men,” they chose to elide music, so his contribution was limited mostly to ambient sounds and “Blood Trails,” the track that played over the closing credits. Here, he’s in thriller mode. 

“The Tragedy of Macbeth” was shot on soundstages like a highbrow answer to the pulp of “Sin City.” Burwell described the film’s look to IndieWire as more of a “psychological reality” than one with any precedent in locational reality. Production designer Stefan Dechant fills that world with geometric spaces. Focusing on the actor’s faces against an economy of chiaroscuro backgrounds brings out the emotion of certain lines in an intimate, conversational way, in contrast to what you might see or hear in a stage performance where the thespians were playing to the back of the house.