Her cheeks flush, her breathing becomes rapid. Clearly flustered at his physicality in grabbing her and picking her up, she is nevertheless excited. On ordering the servants to release Anna, Katherine gets into a physical confrontation with one of the grooms, a young black man named Sebastian. Unabashed in her movements and opinions, she heads to the barn and finds the maid Anna trussed up in a sack like a pig being weighed for slaughter and sale. Out about the grounds one day, she hears a disturbance in the barns. For the first time we see her eyes light up, a spring in her step an ease as if breathing a sigh of relief.
From the first moment of morning’s freedom, Katherine heads out about the grounds and then for a walk on the cliffs outlying the estate. (Thanks to Oldroyd’s visual and aural design, and Birch’s script, it seems evident that either Alexander is impotent or does not favor those of the female persuasion.)īut things soon change for Katherine as first Alexander is sent away for an extended trip to outlying family holdings, and then Boris also leaves. So constrained is Katherine’s life that Boris even commands her when to have sex with Alexander in order to secure the family lineage. There is no conversation but that initiated by Boris, or a drunken Alexander late at night in the privacy of the master bedroom.
No walks on the grounds, no riding any one of the numerous horses stabled at the manor, no visitors but for the pastor. Under the dutiful watch of maid Anna, no movement of Katherine’s goes unnoticed. Looked upon as mere chattel by Alexander, and particularly by Boris, while obedient to the demands of her father-in-law, and succumbing to the somewhat awkward marital relations between she and Alexander, beneath her cold empty eyes, something dark lies within Katherine.
#Lady macbeth movie free#
Resentful of not only the marriage but of her new husband and his wealthy father Boris, a colliery magnate with Alexander as his only heir, Katherine is like a randy steed determined to break free of the reins forced upon her by her now station in life. Based on Nikolai Leskov’s Lady Makbeth of Mtensk, issues of race, class and gender make this story as timely today as it was in 1865 Russia or in 19th century rural England where screenwriter Alice Birch has relocated the film.Įxquisitely rendered by director William Oldroyd in his feature directorial debut, the precision of framing, character movement and sound is as deliberate and metaphoric as the stunning performance of Florence Pugh in the title role of Katherine.ġ7-year old Katherine has been “sold” into an arranged marriage to the much older Alexander as a means to repay a family debt. You may, however, find more than a few nods to the glory of Hitchcockian suspense. Despite the title, and a few suspicious deaths and machinations of intrigue and deceit, you will find no mention of Shakespeare in this visceral, yet austere, telling of LADY MACBETH as screenwriter Alice Birch delves into the moral ambiguity of 1865, all to exquisite result.
0 kommentar(er)
