Lady Macbeth Should Have Been a Daring Take on Remorseless Evil. It Fails at That—and Much More
IF SOME ambitious women’s studies major decided that her thesis would be a movie in which film noir tropes of the femme fatale are married to a denunciation of the patriarchy, the result might be very close to William Oldroyd’s Lady Macbeth. Say this for it: As thesis filmmaking goes, it’s nasty enough to keep your interest, but the pleasure is scant—in part because the filmmaking is so calculated. Every shot is meticulously composed to make its point, with nothing left to chance. It is so calculated that you can see every shock from 3 miles out, and if it weren’t for cold cruelty, Lady Macbeth would have no life at all.
The setting is some godforsaken part of rural England in the mid-19th century. Katherine (Florence Pugh) is sold in marriage as part of a land deal to Alexander (Paul Hilton), who needs an heir for his coal mining business. Her new husband—a cold, mean drunk who is impotent only with her—wants to control her every move, and her hideous father-in-law (Christopher Fairbank) offers no comfort, instructing her to basically be a slave to his son.
This story is from the July 14 2017 edition of Newsweek.
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This story is from the July 14 2017 edition of Newsweek.
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