Why? For years prior to the latest Spider-man, Marvel fans flooded social media with speculation about a sequel, but I didn't see Shakespeare fans clamoring for a new Macbeth.
No, the fans who keep Shakespeare's franchise going are directors and actors, because they know that Macbeth is fun. Shakespeare's poetry is long on feeling and relationships, but short on staging specifics, so you're challenged to make something different with material that a thousand stage companies have performed before. Within the boundaries of story and verse, Shakespeare packs a playground of images and themes for your creative pleasure.
So, for example, Shakespeare repeatedly calls Macbeth's world both "foul and fair" with other pairs of contrasting words. That gives film connoisseur Coen a good excuse, if he needed one, to shoot in classic black and white.
Macbeth, by calling himself "a poor player who struts and frets his hour on the stage," gives Coen license to skip the rock and muck of medieval Scotland and film most of the action on a dream-like sound-stage set. No actual castle would contain such a maze of infinite passageways, high smooth walls, indefinite light sources, and sharp black shadows that fall in acute angles. Even the outdoor scenes -- a field, a forest, a distant ridge -- are backdrops for action more than environments for it.
Coen makes this a bird-eat-bird world. Scavengers circle above the battlefield in the opening shot; apparitions of witches and Banquo's ghost are re-imagined with ravens. I've thought about Macbeth with every flock of crows I've seen since the movie. Shakespeare may have suggested the avian motif to Coen: I heard references to crows, ravens, wrens, an owl, a falcon, and chickens. A Google search turned up eagles, martens, kites, maggot-pies a.k.a. magpies, choughs, and rooks.
Macbeth is a playground for actors, too. Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand, older than actors who've recently played the Macbeths on film, make it the story of a passionate couple who, childless, are running out of time to make a legacy. Grizzled and bearish, Washington's Macbeth is furious when a slighter, younger man gets the promotion that Macbeth has earned; the Lady prays to be "unsexed" so that killer instincts may replace maternal ones. When Macbeth wavers, she reminds him of the child she "gave suck" that evidently didn't survive, in order to pull her husband back from the brink of decency. But when he says in admiration, "Produce men-children only," McDormand appears not gratified, but hurt. That dialogue is Exhibit A for what makes Shakespeare fun for actors: in a very short while, they get to show off a range of emotions from dread to scorn to horror to passionate love.
Shakespeare hands a great part to the actor who plays Macduff, Corey Hawkins. He's a young warrior in the background for much of the play, but then we see how Macbeth's hired assassins, failing to find Macduff at home, slaughter his family. Shakespeare gives the wife and eldest son just enough banter to get a sense for their family's warmth; Moses Ingram as the mother is fearful but trying not to show it, and young Ethan Hutchinson is precocious without being precious, making the violence that follows more affecting than I've ever seen. We're still reeling from that when Macduff, in exile, asks how his family is doing. Shakespeare does a remarkable thing, making Macduff silent. Other characters tell him to give voice to his grief. Even now, I'm moved remembering Hawkins' performance, as his Macduff holds the emotions in until he can face Macbeth.
So, I'm crying when I write a piece about how Macbeth is so much fun, but that's the point: Shakespeare's work works, and seeing what different artists find in it is what has kept us coming back for 500 years.
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