Lady Macbeth (2016) review - Movie Thoughts (Chapter 18) ❤

 Hello everyone,

Today's film is an underrated dark horse. I'd heard people talking about this film, and particularly how good Florence Pugh is in it, around Academy Awards season when Pugh received her nomination for Little Women. I loved her in that 2020 film, and I loved her in this 2016 film as well; and just to clarify this actually had nothing to do with Shakespeare....

(**disclaimer: the following thoughts are 100% my opinion, you do not have to agree with them - film is inherently subjective and everyone's perspective is valid! Also, there are probably spoilers in the following, read at your own risk. Now onto some thoughts....**)

Source: IMDB

Although the title would suggest a literal Shakespeare retelling, director William Oldroyd weaved in a darker metaphorical connotation with a story of an unhappy married woman and a turbulent love affair. In 19^th Century rural England, young bride Catherine (Florence Pugh) is traded into marriage and discovers hidden truths about her character when her escapades with an estate worker lead her down a deadly path. Devotion characterized by obsession, sex and tension; evoking one of the most infamously ambitious and cold-hearted women in literary circles charts a trajectory for Catherine shrouded in well-executed darkness.

Oldroyd’s direction presented a succinct, twisted and dark romance where it was hard to tell who, if anyone, came out victorious. Clever choices of camera angles emphasized a sharp and confined supervision of the large, empty manor house. Also lingering for long periods of time on faces – in pain, with disingenuous resolve, clearly struggling – and audiences aren’t cannot look away. We all have to bear witness. The child suffocation scene was particularly uncomfortable for this reason, and is drawn out so as to elongate the horror to a discomforting climax. With a bleak colour palette and dripping in shadows, this film was unrelentingly unhappy that built on its haunting and dark undertones at a controlled pace.

Although the pacing could be seen as slow at times, it was intentional to emphasis the breakdown of the people living inside the house. There’s nothing graphically violent early on, and the devil slowly emerged in the details until the stench of darkness is hard to ignore. Writer Alice Birch and Oldroyd’s surprise introduction of the late husband’s ward Teddy (Anton Palmer) and guardian Agnes (Golda Rosheuvel) was an unexpected yet clever injection of tension; shattering the tentative paradise Catherine had created for herself and thus triggered the darkest turn and eventual climax of the narrative.

With a whispery and haunting score by Dan Jones, Oldroyd has also drawn audiences into this tale by containing many of the main events within the eerie house grounds and surrounding hills. It was strangely constraining; audiences were trapped like Catherine and helpless to do nothing but watch the craziness unfold. The cinematography was dark and totally essential to the unsettling atmosphere; almost like an essential background character on its own.

Birch picked her words carefully to pack a punch in the necessary moments over the course of a curiously sparse screenplay. Exposition was somewhat secondary to the visual storytelling that took place, yet everything encompassed a melancholy and foreboding that foreshadowed much of the slaughter Catherine would mastermind. Although vague on context clues like how Catherine came to know the family she would enter into via marriage or much about Catherine’s family, it was clear in her defiance and spirit that she was always going to attempt to rewrite her future.

Florence Pugh was enigmatically brilliant as troubled protagonist Catherine. Hidden beneath a cool and unfeeling exterior, audiences were often left wondering about her true mindset most of the time. For all the setup of Catherine being treated poorly by her in-laws, which is another conversation about misogynistic behaviour in it of itself, audiences are swept up in the cold truth that Catherine is more than capable of committing her own atrocities. Ultimately selfish, cold and undeterred by the emotional toll of her actions on others, she was a hard woman to engage with because there was no remorse. Maidservant Anna (a fabulously vulnerable performance by Naomi Ackie) even became selectively mute to protect herself from Catherine. Her first kills felt like revenge and slightly more paletteable once viewed in the vein of revenge against awful men. Yet the death of the child, an incredibly well constructed sequence, was the point of no return and a truly selfish action that ended up backfiring. Her lover and accomplice succumbed to his conscience, and Catherine ended up betrayed and alone.  Pugh carried the film, and what could be interpreted as Catherine’s survival quickly diverged into something far more calculatingly sinister.

Stablehand Sebastian (Cosmo Jarvis) was a morally ambiguous and somewhat vague presence who engaged in a costly affair with Catherine. Pugh and Jarvis’ chemistry was slightly lacklustre, but it clearly wasn’t going to be a love conquers all scenario. The whole affair is conducted on a knife’s edge, shrouded in ambition and unbalanced devotion. Ironically, it was the moments when Sebastian was breaking down under the weight of his actions as Catherine’s accomplice/lover that he displayed the most humanity.

A compact narrative that perfectly balanced tension akin to a psychological thriller with the darkness of a woman gone semi-mad with ambition. A captivating lead performance and gorgeous cinematography painted a vivid picture of murder and greed that even Mr. Shakespeare would have been proud of.

8.5/10, 4 STARS

Thanks for reading,

Love and blood on your hands, Emily ❤