Lady Macbeth

As "Lady Macbeth" (2016 release from the UK; 90 min.) opens, we see a young woman (we later learn her name is Katherine) getting married in what looks to be 19th century England. On her wedding night, she is left untouched by her (older) husband. Her father-in-law, also living there, is equally unpleasant. Katherine is utterly lonely and depressed. Then one day, both her husband and father-in-law must go out of town for business. It's not long before Katherine strikes up a torrid affair with one of the groomsmen. At this point we're about 10 min. into the movie. What will become Katherine and her lover? To tell you more of the plot would spoil your viewing experience, you'll just have to see for yourself how it all plays out.

Couple of comments: you may think this is yet another movie adaptation of the Shakespeare play, but in fact this is based on the Russian novel Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District by Nicolai Leskov. I will leave it to the Shakespeare experts to comment how different this story is from Shakespeare's. What I can say is this: the movie is very much story-driven. Things happen, and happen fast, and it doesn't let up! There is hardly any music in the film. Another unusual fact: the movie does not have a title. There are no opening credit, and when the end titles start, it simply says "Based on Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District by Nicolai Leskov", and that's it. (The Katherine character is regularly referred to as "Mrs. Lester" or maybe that should be "Leicester".) The star of the movie for sure is Florence Pugh, an up-and-coming British actress, whom I can assure you we will see plenty more of (she reminds me of a young Kate Winslett). Played by Pugh, Katherine is passionate and ruthless. Last but not lest, the movie was filmed (according to the end titles) in Northumberland, the area just below the border with Scotland, just beautiful.

"Lady MacBeth" premiered at the 2016 Toronto International Film Festival to positive buzz. It finally opened this weekend at my local art-house theater here in Cincinnati, and I couldn't wait to see it. The Friday early evening screening where I saw this at was attended dismally (4 people, including myself), which does not bode well for this movie, considering it was the opening night. That's a shame. Maybe this will gather a larger audience through Amazon Instant Video, or eventually on DVD/Blu-ray. If you like a strong story-driven movie with great acting, you could do a lot worse than this particular "Lady MacBeth"!

I was enthralled by this movie from start to finish. The cinematography and sound were excellent. The complete absence of a music soundtrack except for two notable atmospheric crescendos added to the overall oppressiveness of the story and the location. All of the performances were excellent and the lead was outstanding IMO. The story was in many ways familiar - being evocative of Bronte and Hardy - with its portrayal of Victorian country gentry and the brutality and sense of entitlement that sometimes occurred between the classes but the way the story unfolded frequently surprised me by not following through in the way one might have expected it to. I too would recommend a cinema viewing in order to get the full effect of the landscape and the oppressive silence of the house.

"Lady Macbeth" is like a Charlotte Bronte novel if the main heroine were a psychopath.

Florence Pugh plays a young woman saddled with a marriage and an estate that she did not choose for herself, who gets a taste of what it is to give in to her own passionate urges when she shacks up with a hunky stable boy and then decides that she will have a life with him no matter what or who she has to eliminate to make it happen.

"Lady Macbeth" sounds dark and juicy on paper, and it could have been a fabulously lurid spin on the Victorian Gothic template, but as treated here it's far too restrained to take advantage of the pulpy subject matter. The whole film, from the direction to the performances, really needed to go for it and not hold back. Instead, it's too quiet and slow by half, and though Pugh does an admirable job, one can't help but wonder how much more memorable a character she might have been able to create had she been allowed to really go off the rails. Maybe an odd and random thought, but the whole time I was watching this movie I was thinking what a younger Naomi Watts could have done with it.

Not a total misfire, but nowhere nearly as good as it could have been.

Grade: B

The story starts with a marriage. When the wedding is over, we all expect a romance to accure. Though all we observe is a loveless husband who's going to enslave his woman as a figure in a cage. The powerless lady who had tried to be a devoted compliant wife by obedience, receives no reward in return. Untill this part you've already made your side. You excessively sympathize with the oppressed lady.

But soon after, everything changes. In the absence of her husband, she finds her power and freedom to rule the house. The woman who's been inadequatly satisfied in love and passion, makes an affair with one of his stable workers. The taste of freedom to rule makes her insane to do anything to maintain the condition, even if it means she has to murder someone, has to enslave others or has to sacrifice her love.

The movie indicates how feasible it is for an innocent hunt to be the predator hunter, if they find the moment. The performances of Florence Pugh, Naomi Ackie and Cosmo Jarvis are mesmerizing. Although the script, to put it bluntly, is not perfect, I liked it. All in all, it absolutely worth watching and I recommend you to do so.

Looking at the title, you might think director William Oldroyd's Lady Macbeth is about revenge, lust, murder, and boredom, and you would be right on all counts. Katherine (Florence Pugh), a 19th century teen bride of an arranged marriage to a middle-aged drunk, can't get no satisfaction. Her husband is impotent for starters, and the estate is so forbidding murder would seem to be a required pastime.

Yet, sex is the prime mover here, where she discovers randy groomsman Sebastian (Cosmo Jarvis), and takes him to bed in the long absence of her hubby. Meek black Anna (Naomi Ackie), Katherine's servant, observes the shenanigans, much as we do, unable to change what she sees will be an outcome unpleasant to the core. To the end Anna is faithful to Katherine, a slave to a mistress who is herself a slave to men and convention.

Several archetypal themes arise in this somber, artfully-photographed drama. For instance, one that emphasizes the wages of sin is prominent; another about the subjugated rising against the oppressor; and another about the danger of socially imprisoning smart women in a paternalistic society. A leitmotif also surfaces about the dangers of debilitating class distinctions, which are never a good thing in the long haul.

Ari Wegner's cinematography is portrait-like if considering only the recurring shot of Katherine sitting on her Victorian couch in a consuming dress that seems to deteriorate with each similar shot. Underneath the dress is the corset, so long a symbol of the era's tight hold on women.

Remembering Amma Asante's Belle, I'm pleased to see another art- film treatment of fraught race relations in merry ol' England. That none of this will ever stop is promised in the spawn of the miscreants, children of evil destined to repeat their parents' sins.

Lady Macbeth is an interesting minimalist story of a smothered young woman, whose intensity will lay waste to the social fabric of the estate. In fact, much of the proceedings are Shakespearean with their emphasis on man's weakness in his dominance, a woman's Eve-like ability to lure men into sin, and the pride that inevitably leads to a fall.

Depressing but dramatically satisfying.