On the evening of Friday, September 24, the 59th Annual New York Film Festival officially opened. Joel Coen's high-profile new work, The Tragedy of Macbeth, served as the opening film for its world premiere at Lincoln Center.
Adapted from Shakespeare's famous play Macbeth, the film tells the story of Scottish general Macbeth, who conspired with his wife to assassinate the king after receiving a prophecy from the three witches. Oscar-winning Denzel Washington ("Training Day") and actress Frances McDormand ("The Land of No Man") played Macbeth and Mrs. Macbeth in the film, respectively, both of which were present at the premiere.
Editor: Green Brick Press
Curated: Leave the bookroom behind
Reproduction without permission is prohibited
The creators of "The Tragedy of Macbeth" appeared at the premiere
The New York Film Festival is a non-competitive international film festival that began in 1963 and is held every autumn in New York, USA, for about half a month, hosted by the Lincoln Center Film Society.
The last New York Film Festival, which was held online and in open-air theaters due to the impact of the epidemic, was able to return to the indoor cinema hall. On opening night, the theatre lobby was bustling and bustling throughout the night, with the screening hall packed.
Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center
Sponsor Campari offered people a free aperitif
The audience was seated and waited to watch the movie
This year's opening film "The Tragedy of Macbeth" is the first work to be directed by one of the Coen brothers alone, and the director took the opportunity to remake the old drama and bring this well-known classic to the screen again. Prior to this, "Macbeth" has appeared in more than twenty film and television adaptations, including some of the masterpieces of orsun Wells, Akira Kurosawa, and Roman Polanski.
Around the screenings at 6 and 9 o'clock, director Joel Cohen and several crew members appeared in the auditorium, and each speech was accompanied by a long round of applause from the audience. Cohen told the audience about the film's production process, and also talked about the long-standing taboo †:
"You shouldn't mention that word, lest some terrible doom befall you or the work." Before Friday, March 13, 2020†† day, everyone involved in the filming was indifferent to this statement. From that day on we suddenly became superstitious, and then months passed, the film finally resumed its course, and we all began to refer to it as "that tragedy."
† note: There is an industry superstition about "Macbeth", saying that because the show is cursed by witches, it would be unlucky to call the name of the play directly in the theater. So some people will euphemistically call it "that Scottish drama".
†† note: The epidemic first broke out in the United States, and the film was forced to stop filming.
Poster of The Tragedy of Macbeth
"I want to point out: although this is a tragedy, it does not mean that you can't have fun. So enjoy this tragedy." The director thus made the opening statement for his own film.
In terms of content, Macbeth's play (and Shakespeare's many others) fits in perfectly with Cohen's usual style: the story involves thematic elements of witchcraft, official intrigue, irresistible fate, depicting humanity that is gradually swallowed up by greed and guilt, and containing frequent bloody scenes and wonderful banter clips—all tailored to Cohen's black comedy.
What I didn't expect was that despite the fact that the script had so much room to play, the director chose to take an extremely restrained approach, avoiding large innovations. The entire film was shot in black and white, giving the impression of an early black crime film. Almost all of the scenes in the film are completed in the studio, the minimalist background seems to be designed for the stage play, and the modernist architecture is reminiscent of Bergman's historical fantasy story.
Aside from the stylized light and shadow treatment, this is generally a fairly conservative remake: the narrative structure of the original book is faithfully restored, most of the lines are intact, and there are no novel, eye-catching contemporary elements in the film, nor any elements of parody or mockery (except for the irony of the storyline itself). One hour and forty-five minutes, in my opinion, nothing particularly stunning—perhaps because every picture is equally gripping.
The Tragedy of Macbeth is expected to be released by A24 in U.S. theaters by the end of the year and will land on Apple TV+ streaming on-demand in mid-January next year. As of today, the film has received unanimous praise from major mainstream media critics, and this trend is expected to appear again in next year's Oscar season.
During the post-screening Q&A session, lead actor and executive producer Francis McDormand was asked about his previous experience as Mrs. Macbeth. She told the audience that she had read shakespeare for the first time in her seventh-grade English class and staged the classic sleepwalk scene in the play, that is, she had been involved in the trip since then and had not been able to get out of it (she also said that "Macbeth" was suitable as the first Shakespeare for fourteen-year-old children to start reading, because it involved death and all kinds of chaos). And when she played the role again, it was more than forty years since the previous one: a few years ago at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre, when she was in her fifties.
This Macbeth adaptation can be seen as an exploration of the age of the characters. Both lead actors are in their sixties, older than Macbeth and Lady Macbeth in most previous versions. The film's cast is also very diverse, mixed with American, British and Irish English speakers, professionally trained Shakespeare actors, and less experienced like the two lead actors.
Books aside,
In the opening film of the 59th New York Film Festival, director Joel Cohen and the main creators visited the premiere of the #59th New York Film Festival
The video number
Halfway through McDormand's speech, actor Denzel Washington was late on the field
Macbeth and Lady Macbeth play the characters
McDormand recounted an anecdote. At one small talk, Denzel Washington asked her, "Where do you think we met?"
She asked, who?
Denzel replied, "They," Mr. and Mrs. Macbeth.
She said, "Oh! Shakespeare wrote another play, Romeo and Juliet, about a pair of lovers who were torn apart by fate, and their parents didn't want them to be together but they wanted to, so they both died — but what if they didn't? They become us! That's probably where we started."
The Tragedy of Macbeth was released after Q&A
Cohen called making a movie like a play a "luxury," and McDormand talked about anecdotes
Toward the end, the host asked McDormand how she felt at the end of the day she had been thinking about since she was fourteen. McDormand replied, "Being with so many company members and people involved in the production today is really, really great, very important for us. But I think one of the best things we did today was the conversation with the students after the screening —Columbia, New York, Julia College, the students of the Performing Arts High School, and the problems, the passion, the energy they brought..."