Movie Review—Lady Macbeth

by Peter J. O’Connell    

Lady Macbeth. Released: July 2017. Runtime: 89 mins. MPAA Rating: R for some disturbing violence, strong sexuality/nudity, and language.

The pushback by women in Victorian times against the restrictions imposed on them has been featured in four films in recent months. In A Quiet Passion, Emily Dickinson responded gently by withdrawal and creativity; in My Cousin Rachel, Cousin Rachel definitely responded, though we’re not sure whether it was gently or violently; in The Beguiled, genteel women eventually dealt with male intrusion in a definitely non-genteel way; in Lady Macbeth, the protagonist responds by hot-blooded passion and cold-blooded violence. 

Lady Macbeth, directed by William Oldroyd from a script by Alice Birch, is not an overt version of Shakespeare’s “Scottish play.” The film is a version of the first half of Russian author Nikolai Leskov’s novella Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, first published in 1865 in a magazine edited by Dostoevsky. Leskov’s work is itself not an overt version of Shakespeare, but the influence of the Bard’s dark story is inevitable.

Oldroyd’s film begins in 1865 at a somewhat remote estate in northern England. Boris (Christopher Fairbank), the estate’s owner, has bought some land and along with it, Katherine (Florence Pugh), a lovely 17-year-old. Boris marries off Katherine to his middle-aged son, Alexander (Paul Hilton), a widower. Boris very much wants a grandchild, but Alexander and his late wife did not produce one. Boris makes it very clear to Katherine that she is expected to do so. That is a difficult assignment inasmuch as the cold and demanding Alexander shows little interest in, and less ability at, consummating a sexual relationship with his wife, despite her youth and beauty.

Katherine loves to walk outside in the woods, meadows, and moors surrounding the estate, feeling at one with nature and the animals. Boris and Alexander, however, forbid her to do so. They want her to remain in the big house, which is drably furnished and lacks books, except for the Bible, and other accouterments of cultured living. Katherine finds herself spending her days mostly sitting in a big, beautiful, blue dress on a brownish “love seat.” Her only close associate is Anna (Naomi Ackie), her sympathetic but mostly mute maid.

Katherine appears to be part of that 19^th-century literary sisterhood of women trapped in loveless marriages that includes Hester Prynne, Madame Bovary, Anna Karenina, Isabel Archer, and Nora Heimer. Like some of them, she encounters a magnetic male who brings life to her life, so to speak. For Katherine that male is James (Cosmo Jarvis), a virile, assertive worker on the estate. When Boris and Alexander are called away for a time to deal with a crisis, Katherine and James have high times together, both in and out of bed. And they don’t much care who knows. so long as it’s not Boris or Alexander. But Boris does catch wind of what’s up and returns angrily to restore decorum.

At this point, Lady Macbeth shifts from feminist period piece to film noir in a Victorian setting, with Katherine committing deeds as dark as those of such femme fatales as the Barbara Stanwyck character in Double Indemnity or the Gene Tierney character in Leave Her to Heaven. Unlike in My Cousin Rachel, there is no ambiguity here concerning Katherine’s response to Boris and, later, Alexander’s efforts to “tame” her.

Complications come with the arrival of a woman named Mary (Golda Rosheuvel) and her grandson, little Teddy (Anton Palmer), whom Katherine dotes on—for a while—and the decline in confidence and commitment of James. But the complications only make Katherine more confident herself as she takes action to resolve the situation. When at the film’s end, Katherine—now somewhat plump around the middle--sits in her big, beautiful, blue, dress—now somewhat soiled—in that love seat, it is as if a queen, though not a Scottish one, has taken the throne, a throne of blood.

Lady Macbeth provides that ever-growing firmament of beautiful and talented young British actresses with a new and very bright star—a Florence to add to the assorted Emmas, Emilys, Emilias, and others who have graced movie screens in recent years. Pugh’s performance is charismatic. She has a striking ability to rivet an audience’s attention on her face by its being somehow both impassive and expressive at the same time.

The rest of Oldroyd’s cast is also well chosen. The roles of Anna, James, Mary, and Teddy are played by actors who are black or of mixed race. In Lady Macbeth this anachronistic situation is not simply a fulfillment of a diversity imperative in casting but provides a link between the class crosscurrents of the 19^th century and the race/ethnicity ones of today. The excellence of the actors makes the situation work well as a complement to the sex/gender concerns of the main story line.