“Macbeth” a Damned Spot on Both Coen’s and Shakespeare’s Legacies

Disappointed as I am that the Coen brothers have parted ways as a filmmaking team, I’m sure they have straightforward enough reasons for doing so. I have far more difficulty, however, imagining why Joel would choose to adapt The Tragedy of Macbeth as his first Ethan-less cinematic foray. And after seeing how weak it turned out, I’m all the more puzzled.

Admittedly, I’ve got a lower opinion of “the Scottish play” than many. While I’m long past being enamored of Shakespeare, I freely confess his genius and will tout the greatness of several of his plays (particularly Hamlet) any day of the week. But despite being a powerhouse treatise on ambition and containing one truly brilliant speech, Macbeth is by turns contrived, boring and simply ridiculous.

So Joel had a long road to hoe with me on this one. But hey, as half of the auteur team behind a few of my all-time favorite works of art (Miller’s Crossing, No Country for Old Men, A Serious Man), I was interested to see whether he could spin silk out of Shakespeare’s sow’s ear.

Instead, Coen has let the Bard drag him to a creative nadir. Start with the ponderous mise-en-scène. The shadowy black-and-white feels more overwrought than organic, an attempt to manufacture mood rather than earn it. The sound design is just as unsubtle, with drops of blood and water literally pounding as they hit the floor. Set design is equally heavy-handed, the majority of the action unfolding within bizarrely sparse castles looking like incomplete Escher prints, the overall impression being one of an art director with too small a budget. Exteriors are all clouds and murk à la Bergman, except he did it better despite giving Coen a 60-year technological head-start.

There are also notable post-production failings — the kind of thing that rarely appears in the Coens’ meticulous oeuvre — including a couple of obvious dialog looping errors (really, how does a character’s speaking without her mouth moving make it into the final print?) and some incongruous editing.

I suppose I can’t complain about the cast. In case you don’t already know how good Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand are, let’s just say their five Oscars don’t tell half the story. But however competent they may be here, scriptive shortcomings — weak source material, plus cuts that leave the characters’ motivations even less convincing than they were to begin with — neuter their efforts.

To make matters worse, despite going out of his way to make his Macbeth as dark as possible, a couple of cuts Coen hasn’t made are to the play’s two bits of comic relief. Granted, they are neither particularly funny nor clever in the original, but even if they were, to include them in this take on the play is incomprehensibly misguided.

All told, Joel’s Coen’s The Tragedy of Macbeth is a gray, joyless monument to how sometimes two heads are better than one. Thankfully, he and his brother have already done a lifetime’s worth of great work that we can revisit anytime. But this here ain’t even Shakespeare for Coen brothers fans.

Don’t believe me? See The Tragedy of Macbeth for yourself at the Art Theatre of Long Beach and other theaters near you.

Details: arttheatrelongbeach.com

Venue: Art Theatre of Long Beach 2025 E. 4th St., Long Beach