- Title: Lady Macbeth
- IMDb: link
Only loosely based on Nikolai Leskov’s novella, 2016’s Lady Macbeth is primarily notable for the lead performance of Florence Pugh as a younger wife stuck in a marriage of convivence to a disinterested older man (Paul Hilton) growing more and more isolated in rural Northumberland before beginning an affair with one of her husband’s servants (Cosmo Jarvis). The film from director William Oldroyd takes some patience as, to highlight the banality of her life, nothing happens for the first 20 minutes of the film. We don’t know who Katherine was before her marriage and whether circumstances drove her to the cruelty on display or simply allowed that cruelty to fester and eventually lash out.
Once given a bit of freedom to fight for, our protagonist strikes out at those who would take it from her including her father-in-law (Christopher Fairbank), her husband, and the bastard son (Anton Palmer) of her husband from another woman while successfully deflecting suspicion off herself to others in the house.
While I can admire the work that went into the film including Pugh’s performance, the costumes and staging by Holly Waddington and Thalia Ecclestone, and cinematography by Ari Wegner, I’ll admit much of Lady Macbeth left me cold as I found neither joy nor horror in the antics of a character I never truly felt invested in. The film delving into gender dynamics from a more modern world view is a fun intellectual exercise that for me, didn’t connect on an emotional level of similar period films such as The Duchess, A Royal Affair, or Pride & Predjudice.
Watch the trailer
