The Tragedy of Macbeth

Yours truly's favorite play, the first example, IMHO, of existentialism writ large, where existence cares not but simply is, no matter what man conjures up regarding his brief participation on Shakespeare's world stage. In viewing Coen's amazing adaptation, one sees what the abyss looks like, echoing later writers like Camus, Melville, Beckett and Conrad, in trying to explain a reality we will never fully understand.

And it is that feeling of being stuck in a world we do not fully understand and cannot control that The Tragedy of Macbeth is most interested in. Of all the versions of the Scottish play I have seen, this one is by far the scariest, a work of cosmic horror in which supernatural beings pursue their own games, delighting in their ability to manipulate and destroy the mortals caught it their web. As the witches, Kathryn Hunter, a virtuosic shapeshifter and Shakespeare veteran largely unknown to moviegoers, is genuinely uncanny, her body curling around itself, her voice scraping the very bottom of her register. By going all-in on this idea, the film downplays the original’s other themes of the destructive and ultimately hollow nature of ambition. 

Of Winter ...