I wasn’t quite expecting the cool, super cinematic version of Macbeth to also feel the most like homework out of the three adaptations I watched this weekend.
Justin Kurzel’s Macbeth is decent. It’s gorgeously shot and designed, but the whole thing plays a little too restrained as it teases its high genre visuals, yet also stays pretty emotionally grounded and one-note for much of the runtime. I didn’t really connect with the text much here either.
I struggled for awhile to determine whether I believed the best medium for The House was film as opposed to the mini-series format. With the anthology structure, there’s a physical connection between all three pieces, but the tones are vastly different — the obvious result of very unique artists helming each section within their own visual style.
The first piece is easily the best. Channeling some Neil Gaiman magic realism vibes, the artists are smart to work in partnership with the inherent…
Regardless of your individual tolerance with Shakespeare’s use of language, Joel Coen’s The Tragedy of Macbeth is a feast of immaculate filmmaking that gifts a cinematic experience as intellectually stimulating as it is emotionally stirring. This is poetic, art-house cinema that exists in its own time and space, resulting in a stunning balance between stage & screen craft that deftly communicates its narrative meaning through visual and auditory storytelling before anyone utters a single consonant or vowel.
Over 400 years later and…
I think good works of art leave us with a vast vocabulary to express our response as articulately and full of detail as possible. I also think great works of art often leave us completely devoid of that ability. Still, I will sit at my desk here and try to type what I can about Drive My Car, with this dairy entry more for me and my own memory than anything else.
The more a person starts to intensely follow…
