In the Flesh: The Tragedy of MacBeth (Patreon)

The entirety of Joel Coen’s The Tragedy of MacBeth was shot on soundstages, and I mean it as a compliment when I say that you can really tell. Brutalist concrete parapets hang suspended in fields of swirling fog machine mist. Dark water floods a cold and sterile courtyard. Every frame of Coen’s film is calculated to disorient and alienate, to unmoor the viewer from any particular sense of place or time. Cinematographer Bruno Delbonnel’s work renders artifice — synthetic leaves and branches, computer-generated crows — almost grotesquely sharp and real, while the film’s elaborate but barren sets seem like something conjured out of a dream. The black and white is breathtaking, though McDormand, Hawkins, and several others lack the facial mobility to make the most of its deep shadows and hyperdefinition. Washington, by contrast, brings a tremendous amount of subtlety to his facial performance in the lead role, and Katherine Hunter is astonishing as all three of the Wyrd Sisters, an eerie, reptilian presence whose high-pitched croak lends real eldritch terror to her famous dialogue.

Perhaps the film’s most welcome surprise is the propulsive, engrossing immediacy of its sparse action scenes. Never has Banquo’s death, the part played here by Bertie Carvel, been so captivating. The torch he wields as Macbeth’s footpads set upon him burns as white as a sodium flare, its flame sketching wild lines across the frame as he spins and thrusts and batters at his enemies’ blades. The final confrontation between Macbeth and Macduff (Corey Hawkins) unfolds with an almost balletic fluidity and ends in a truly indelible image, one which nimbly threads the needle between contrivance and pure wonder as only Coen really can. The blocking is likewise richly layered, forced perspective employed frequently to distort the viewer’s senses of scale and distance. Split diopter shots render interiors at once cavernous and conspiratorial.

Harry Melling, developing into a delightful character actor now that he’s shaken off his youthful association with the Harry Potter films, gives a meaty turn in the typically thin role of King Duncan’s (Brendan Gleeson) eldest son Malcolm, projecting an easy, slightly naive likeability which elevates his otherwise expositional scenes. Moses Ingraham also shines as Lady Macduff, her intensity as iron-hard as the death of her son (Ethan Hutchinson) is harrowing. Within the dream world of the film’s strange sets and transparently fake backdrops, the drama of the famous play seems almost new again, even its most famous images seen as though from a fresh angle. In one notable scene, the first appearance of the sisters, two appear as reflections of the third in a pool of standing water, a starkly impossible image like something out of Cocteau’s Orpheus. It feels good to see real magic at the movies.