by Jason Adams
I don't know about you but I've entirely lost all concept of time -- is it really time to start gearing up and delivering news about fall movie festivals? Wasn't it just Sundance a literal second ago? Next thing you'll tell me it's not 2020 anymore. Anyway while I was busy slowing sliding down the wall of my shower with a stunned vacant look on my face the New York Film Festival was announcing its Opening Night film for this year's 59th festival -- Joel Coen's The Tragedy of Macbeth, starring Denzel Washington and Lady Frances McDormand, will kick it off in the city that never sleeps on the night of September 24th. That's 64 days away! Here's their descriptor of the flick:
"A work of stark chiaroscuro and incantatory rage, Joel Coen’s boldly inventive visualization of The Scottish Play is an anguished film that stares, mouth agape, at a sorrowful world undone by blind greed and thoughtless ambition. In meticulously world-weary performances, a strikingly inward Denzel Washington is the man who would be king, and an effortlessly Machiavellian Frances McDormand is his Lady, a couple driven to political assassination—and deranged by guilt—after the cunning prognostications of a trio of “weird sisters” (a virtuoso physical inhabitation by Kathryn Hunter). Though it echoes the forbidding visual designs—and aspect ratios—of Laurence Olivier’s classic 1940s Shakespeare adaptations, as well as the bloody medieval madness of Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood, Coen’s tale of sound and fury is entirely his own—and undoubtedly one for our moment, a frightening depiction of amoral political power-grabbing that, like its hero, ruthlessly barrels ahead into the inferno. An Apple/A24 release."
Other names of note in Joel's take on the Scottish slaughter-tale of yore include Brendan Gleeson, Ralph Ineson (so basso-profundo memorable at Thomasin's pops in The VVitch), and the always memorable Harry Melling. Meanwhile names not of note specifically include Ethan Coen, who didn't work with Joel on this one? I hope the Coens TM are okay. I have a lot invested in that brand loyalty. What do we think -- will this one get the Coen name back in the Oscar business or what?