Preface: No, I will not give you a spoiler alert on a play from the seventeenth century.

Last night I watched Apple’s The Tragedy of Macbeth last night. I wanted to share some quick thoughts on the film, which were too long for microblogging.

On black and white

First, the film is visually stunning. Proponents of black and white films, especially classic films, often say that you stop noticing the lack of color. That’s not the case here. The film plays with shadow and contrast in a way that may simply not be possible in color. You won’t just notice that it’s black and white, you’ll be glad it’s in black and white. As a side note, you’re going to quickly find out if your room is too bright or your screen too dirty. I paused less than a minute into the movie to grab screen wipes.

On the langauge

I’ve heard many times that the reason so many people have difficulty with Shakespeare is that they’re reading it instead of seeing it performed and that, when well performed, it’s easy to understand. I certainly found that to be the case. At first, I was in my head a bit and trying to, for lack of a better term, “manually” parse the language. After fifteen minutes or so, my brain shut up and I had no problems at all understanding what I was hearing.

My one complaint

One way I felt the translation to the silver screen suffered is in the transition between acts and scenes. On stage, there might be a few moments between each scene or even an intermission between acts. While the scene and act breaks are clear, moving quickly from one to the next creates a bit of time compression. It felt to me as if the entire film takes place over only a few days¹. A title card or other more obvious break might help with this pacing. It would also make it a bit easier to break the film into multiple sessions, though a viewer might then encounter the problem of needing to get back into black and white and archaic speech multiple times.

Trivia

There is a well-known superstition (or curse) associated with Macbeth that states that “Macbeth” must not be said in a theater except when rehearsing or performing. For this reason, it is often referred to as “The Scottish Play”. At the 2022 Academy Awards, Chris Rock congratulated Denzel Washington on his performance, using the name “Macbeth.” Only moments later, Will Smith climbed the stage and infamously slapped Rock. Many theater nerds claimed this was due to the curse.

Wrapup

I don’t really have any final thoughts beyond… yes, I would recommend that you watch this movie. Set aside some time and make sure the room is nice and dark.

• Quick Thoughts