Lady Macbeth (2016)
Country: GB
Technical: col/2.39:1 89m
Director: William Oldroyd
Cast: Florence Pugh, Christopher Fairbank, Cosmo Jarvis, Naomi Ackie
Synopsis:
In county Durham in the middle of the nineteenth century, the young wife of a mine owner is bored with her cloistered life and forms a liaison with a farmhand that leads to murder. Blood will have blood, the Bard said, but not if you are rich and powerful, it seems.
Review:
Adapted from the Russian novel, Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, this impressive first feature unfolds in a drear landscape shrouded in wintry light and cannot help but recall Arnold's Wuthering Heights with its setting and racial detail. It is, however, an altogether more controlled affair, deploying costume, props and performance in a minimalist aesthetic doubtless designed to throw the main character's implacability into relief. The widescreen underlines the heroine's isolation in her environment, first imprisoned then imperious. The milk of human kindness is all but absent from this drama, and many will find it unremittingly bleak, like examining insects under a magnifying glass. Doubtless it was intended as an allegory of political power transposed to the landowning classes, where everything is possible and the servants' word counts for nought.
Country: GB
Technical: col/2.39:1 89m
Director: William Oldroyd
Cast: Florence Pugh, Christopher Fairbank, Cosmo Jarvis, Naomi Ackie
Synopsis:
In county Durham in the middle of the nineteenth century, the young wife of a mine owner is bored with her cloistered life and forms a liaison with a farmhand that leads to murder. Blood will have blood, the Bard said, but not if you are rich and powerful, it seems.
Review:
Adapted from the Russian novel, Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, this impressive first feature unfolds in a drear landscape shrouded in wintry light and cannot help but recall Arnold's Wuthering Heights with its setting and racial detail. It is, however, an altogether more controlled affair, deploying costume, props and performance in a minimalist aesthetic doubtless designed to throw the main character's implacability into relief. The widescreen underlines the heroine's isolation in her environment, first imprisoned then imperious. The milk of human kindness is all but absent from this drama, and many will find it unremittingly bleak, like examining insects under a magnifying glass. Doubtless it was intended as an allegory of political power transposed to the landowning classes, where everything is possible and the servants' word counts for nought.
Country: GB
Technical: col/2.39:1 89m
Director: William Oldroyd
Cast: Florence Pugh, Christopher Fairbank, Cosmo Jarvis, Naomi Ackie
Synopsis:
In county Durham in the middle of the nineteenth century, the young wife of a mine owner is bored with her cloistered life and forms a liaison with a farmhand that leads to murder. Blood will have blood, the Bard said, but not if you are rich and powerful, it seems.
Review:
Adapted from the Russian novel, Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, this impressive first feature unfolds in a drear landscape shrouded in wintry light and cannot help but recall Arnold's Wuthering Heights with its setting and racial detail. It is, however, an altogether more controlled affair, deploying costume, props and performance in a minimalist aesthetic doubtless designed to throw the main character's implacability into relief. The widescreen underlines the heroine's isolation in her environment, first imprisoned then imperious. The milk of human kindness is all but absent from this drama, and many will find it unremittingly bleak, like examining insects under a magnifying glass. Doubtless it was intended as an allegory of political power transposed to the landowning classes, where everything is possible and the servants' word counts for nought.