![]() ![]() The costumes here-by Mary Zophres-are so extraordinary they could be the foundation of a new product line. Just as he’s reached role-model grandpa age, he’s a man on the wrong track, though his energy is formidable: he strides through the corridors of his castle with the bullish physicality of a high-school athlete, the panels of his regal leather tunic flaring around his legs like the gills of a fighting fish. And Washington is a phenomenal Macbeth, dithery and stammering at times, unnervingly resolute at others. McDormand makes a sturdy, intriguing Lady Macbeth: With her coiled coif and upright posture, she has the look of one of those women who retires to Santa Fe to weave wall hangings, and this is part of what makes her motives so ghastly-at an age when most aspiring Scottish queens would be winding down, she’s just revving up. The pleasures of The Tragedy of Macbeth are chilly ones: There’s a truly horrifying scene alluding to, if not overtly showing, the murder of Macduff’s children. Horrible, fascinating, scarily human, they’re like a senior-fare Bonnie and Clyde, grabbing at whatever it takes to have their blaze of glory.ĭuncan, the doomed king, is played by Brendan Gleeson, with squinty gravitas Corey Hawkins is his loyal thane Macduff, the trustworthy soul who plays a pivotal role in the finale-but before that, he has a fine scene in which he captures the prickly beginnings of grief. They don’t want to die as also-rans, content to wear a halo of coulda-been-a-contender nobility. When these characters are played by actors who are past middle age-almost past the point where they could derive much enjoyment from power, let alone riches-their desperation becomes the point. The casting of Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand, as the brave Scottish general and his wife whose dreams of becoming royalty turn them murderous, shifts the material into a different shard of light. And yet the play’s sense of what motivates people to do terrible things isn’t as simplistic as all that, and Coen-who wrote this treatment for the screen-knows it. On the surface, the material’s jaundiced view of human nature seems perfect for him. Anyone who wonders why Joel Coen would care to adapt one of Shakespeare’s best known but also bleakest plays probably hasn’t seen many Coen brothers movies. ![]()
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