Cinematic Smackdown: The Tragedy of Macbeth vs True Grit

When I first heard that Joel Coen and Frances McDormand were doing an adaptation of The Tragedy of Macbeth, it went directly to the top of my watchlist, with some trepidation. “Oh no, does this mean the Coen brothers aren’t making any more movies together?” was tempered with “Oh boy, finally I’ll actually be able to understand Macbeth!”

But as is typical for movies that I already know I’m going to like before going in, it’s taken me several years to get around to actually watching it. And it is as stunning as I’d been hoping it would be: the cinematography is unforgettable. The performances — not just McDormand and Denzel Washington, and Kathryn Hunter’s amazing performance as the three witches, but everyone across the board — are outstanding. The music by Carter Burwell is flawless because it’s by Carter Burwell.

It’s such a masterful display of filmmaking that I wish it were more surprising how masterful it is. Instead, it just seems to reinforce the idea that the Coens are physically incapable of making a bad movie.1No, I haven’t seen The Ladykillers. Why do you ask?

But as somebody who has never liked Shakespeare, mostly because I’ve never understood Shakespeare, I was disappointed that this didn’t do much of anything to change that. I’d been hoping that there’d be a moment like in The Hunt for Red October where the dialogue changes from Russian to English, and the camera would be panning around Denzel Washington in mid-soliloquy, and I’d suddenly be able to parse iambic pentameter.

This did not happen. I had subtitles on the entire time, which was a very disappointing distraction from the astounding cinematography, and yet I still didn’t get the point of the majority of the dialogue. I understood the story, for the very first time, and I can thank this adaptation for that. But I am no closer now than I was in my 20s to understanding why there’s always been such an insistence on staying true to Shakespeare’s exact wording, when so much of it seems to me to be full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

And when I say that, I don’t believe that I’m being blasphemous, or being a simpleton. Of course I recognize the power of the “sleep no more” dialogue, and how masterfully it conveys the idea of “oh shit I feel guilty” in a way that can still remain impactful after centuries. But so much of the functional dialogue is so bent on adhering to a centuries-old convention that it obfuscates its function.

I imagine that’s part of why Shakespeare adaptations are so eternally appealing to actors, theater producers, and filmmakers: the challenge of presenting something so archaic and so mannered in a way that it makes sense to contemporary audiences. Occasionally you get an adaptation that tries to add a level of thematic relevance, like “here’s how Macbeth has analogs with fascism,” but for the most part, adaptations seem to be striving for something that stays true to the source material but the audience can still figure out what’s going on.

No doubt it’s a combination of my modern sensibilities and a lack of understanding of what goes into an adaptation, but “I understood the plot!” seems like a pretty low bar to set.

In any case, it’s a bar that The Tragedy of Macbeth easily clears, and even surpasses in a couple of scenes. My favorite was the “is this a dagger which I see before me?” scene. I’m unfamiliar enough with the play to know its original context, but here, it takes place as Macbeth is approaching the door he’ll enter to reach the king’s chambers. At first, it appears in the distance as a dagger inexplicably hung suspended in the darkness. As he walks closer, resolving himself to the reality of what he’s going to do, it also resolves into the handle of the door itself.

But it’s also one of the disappointingly few scenes in the movie — along with most of the appearances of the witches, and Macbeth’s vision of Banquo during the feast — where the images and the words and ideas seemed to be working in conjunction with each other. Most of the movie felt as if the images and the words were just playing in parallel.

Throughout The Tragedy of Macbeth, I kept being reminded of the Coen brothers’ adaptation of True Grit from 2010. I think it’s a masterpiece, one of their best films and one of the best, if not the best, adaptations of a book I’ve ever seen. I saw the movie before reading the book, and it felt so much like a Coen brothers movie that I was sure they must’ve taken extensive liberties with the source material. But reading the book — which is itself a masterpiece — felt as if Charles Portiss had somehow pre-written a novelization of a movie that wouldn’t exist for several decades.

What makes it a brilliant movie is everything that the Coens bring to a project in terms of filmmaking: a frequently-recurring cast of outstanding actors, amazing cinematography (here by Roger Deakins), music by Carter Burwell, editing by longtime collaborator Roderick Jaynes (who strangely doesn’t have any credits apart from working with the Coens). What makes it such a great adaptation is the depiction of Mattie Ross, both in Hailee Steinfeld’s outstanding performance and in the script, which lifts much of Portiss’s dialogue directly.

The entire significance of True Grit lives in Mattie Ross, who is so unwaveringly assured of her own correctness and righteousness that she demands a standard of justice, proper society, and Episcopalian morality that none of the criminals, businessmen, mercenaries, or Texas Rangers around her manage to live up to. The Coens’ adaptation captures that, along with the often understated, surreal humor of the novel.

The reason I kept thinking of True Grit during The Tragedy of Macbeth is because they’re both full of striking images and scenes that feel heavy with symbolism and significance, and very specific, mannered dialogue that is unnatural, but delivered as if it were perfectly natural. True Grit is much less stark and abstract that Macbeth, obviously, but it’s not naturalistic, either: it’s the Coens doing a classic Western in the same way that Miller’s Crossing was the Coens doing a classic gangster movie. They take place in a familiar but alternate reality, full of omens and portents and moments of explosive but beautiful violence. And they have a peculiar, probably-not-entirely-accurate pattern of “correct” or “proper” speech that characters all try with varying levels of success to emulate.

Two of my favorite scenes in True Grit seem almost like a trial run at combining Macbeth with a classic Western. One was an invention of the Coens, the scene where Mattie and Rooster Cogburn meet a stranger in a bear suit, who offers to trade them the body of a dead man for “two dental mirrors and a bottle of expectorant.” I still don’t understand the full significance of that scene, assuming that there was any intended, apart from underscoring how much Mattie was in a strange, foreign world to her. Not because of her age, but because of her steadfast belief in civilization, order, and a proper way of behavior. But simply in terms of mood, it was outstanding: characters confronted with something surreal and brutal, not too different from Macbeth and Banquo first encountering the three witches.

The other scene is when Mattie and Cogburn find the body of a man who was hung from the top of a tall, seemingly dead tree. The scene is framed so that the tree branches create arches, making the scene feel reminiscent of a cathedral. The rope holding the body is barely visible, making him appear to be a solid black figure floating in the sky underneath the arch, a black bird on his shoulder. The image feels to the audience like an omen of doom.

Neither of the characters seems particularly put out by it, though. For Mattie, her main concern is whether it’s Tom Chaney. She’s on a mission for justice, and this would be a kind of justice, albeit an unsatisfying one. She doesn’t seem all that disturbed — beyond how any 14 year old would react to seeing a decomposed body — because she operates on the assumption that this is a natural end for people who are “trash.” For Cogburn, he’s just interested in whether or not he knows the man. It’s unclear whether he actually believes in “justice” anymore at this point, but there’s a sense that he trusts his own assessment of a person’s character more than either the law, the church, or polite society can. Neither is particularly inclined to speeches in the moment (Cogburn says simply, “I do not know this man.”), but it does feel like the kind of portentous moment that would inspire Shakespearean characters to launch into a soliloquy about what drives them.

The mannered language in True Grit is obviously not as extreme as Shakespeare; instead of iambic pentameter, it’s just a version of the old west in which everyone spoke in purposeful, complete sentences and, apparently, contractions had not yet been invented. But some of the dialogue — in particular, the scene in which Mattie attempts to negotiate with a businessman to buy back some ponies her father had bought — has that feeling of extremely stylized speech that still somehow feels conversational.

Of course it wouldn’t be tonally appropriate or even make sense for Macbeth or Lady Macbeth to be taking significant liberties with their dialogue, but I did wish there were more opportunities for performances like Stephen Root’s as the porter.2I hadn’t known he was in the movie, even though he is a fairly frequent collaborator with the Coens, and I love him in every single thing he’s done. He has leeway to deliver the dialogue as if it were meaningless, inconsequential, vulgar rambling instead of centuries-old, carefully-constructed poetry. I did also love seeing a little bit of that break through Denzel Washington’s performance, those moments when his speech or his inflection let pieces of iconic Denzel in.

Root’s performance, while really not similar overall, made me think of Josh Brolin’s as Tom Chaney in True Grit: a shiftless murderer of low class, who betrays his low class every time he tries to speak. He always seems a bit confused by everything that is happening, and he doesn’t bother with proper English unless he’s being sarcastic.3“I think I will oblige the officers to come after me.” And that reminded me of yet another character from the Coens, which is Jon Polito as Jonny Caspar in Miller’s Crossing: eager to show that he’s every bit as refined, classy, and witty as the Irish mobsters he’s competing with, but unable to keep from letting his short temper and rage come through.

It made me wish for a Shakespeare adaptation — which, considering how many there are, undoubtedly already exists — that was willing to deviate from the text in ways that fit the characters. Keep “the good bits,” since I already spent most of this adaptation squinting at subtitles, trying to keep up, until I jumped to attention whenever I heard a famous phrase I recognized. But when the characters are in a fit of non-poetic rage, or just matter-of-factly advancing the plot, feel free to break the meter and use some contemporary vernacular.

I doubt that the Coens would ever be the ones to do that, because they love language and the very specific, precise mannerisms of speech, accents, and slang. But assuming that they didn’t see it as the utmost sacrilege, they’d also be the perfect ones to do it right, since their movies are already full of “code-switching” that doesn’t draw attention to itself.

And speaking of having the hubris to rewrite Shakespeare: again, I’m not familiar enough with Macbeth to compare it to the movie adaptation, but reading a synopsis suggests that all of the major beats are included. That surprised me, because even without knowing the original, the movie somehow felt very abridged. Characters go from normal to “we have to kill him” almost as fast as Susan Orlean deciding to murder Charlie Kaufman in Adaptation. Macbeth goes from guilt-ridden ambitious king to despotic tyrant in a flash. And Lady Macbeth’s death (spoiler!) felt oddly anticlimactic, to no fault of Frances McDormand.

One change that wasn’t much of a surprise: the Thane of Ross is promoted from being more or less a background character in the play to having some kind of role in every major event in the adaptation. It didn’t surprise me because it seemed too ambiguous for Macbeth: the play is full of people giving long speeches explaining their exact mental state and their intentions, but this guy has barely any dialogue, yet seems to be scheming and plotting throughout. I’m still not sure exactly how I feel about the change, but I think I like it. It adds the idea that the tragedy of selfish, ruthless ambition will extend beyond the life of just Macbeth.

And again, now I can finally casually talk about Ross and Banquo and their roles in the play as if I know what I’m talking about, which to me counts as a successful adaptation. I already knew that The Tragedy of Macbeth was going to be a beautifully-shot production full of fantastic performances, which is absolutely true. And I was pretty confident that Coen would be able to bring the full force of his filmmaking talent to an adaptation, which is largely true. Only “largely true” because the movie is almost entirely humorless, which of course is implicit in the title, but the Coens tend to bring at least a sense of sardonic humor to even their most tragic movies.4No, I haven’t seen No Country for Old Men more than once. Why do you ask?

But I was hoping that it would be the movie that finally made me appreciate Shakespeare. Or at least help me understand why actors are so eager to play Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, either because the characters are so deep and nuanced that they demand a performer who understands their depth, or because their dialogue is so powerful that it demands a performer who can make it sound natural. This adaptation and these performances didn’t do that for me. I can appreciate them as masterful, but it’s just that: an appreciation, instead of a genuine love for them.

True Grit did make me want to read the book immediately, if only to find out how the literary and cinematic versions were different. And I think the book and the movie work together perfectly, with the movie bringing out the aspects that you can tell they loved about the book. Not reinventing, reinterpreting, or drawing inspiration from them, but making them cinematic. After reading the book, the movie feels like the Coens sharing a book they love with the audience, and showing us exactly why they love it.

Winner: True Grit, not only because I’m eager to watch it repeatedly, but because it was a case of my favorite filmmakers introducing me to a book I would also end up loving. They made me want to read all of Charles Portiss’s work, while I’m still not particularly interested in Shakespeare.

1
No, I haven’t seen The Ladykillers. Why do you ask?

2
I hadn’t known he was in the movie, even though he is a fairly frequent collaborator with the Coens, and I love him in every single thing he’s done.

3
“I think I will oblige the officers to come after me.”

4
No, I haven’t seen No Country for Old Men more than once. Why do you ask?

1 No, I haven’t seen The Ladykillers. Why do you ask?

2 I hadn’t known he was in the movie, even though he is a fairly frequent collaborator with the Coens, and I love him in every single thing he’s done.

3 “I think I will oblige the officers to come after me.”

4 No, I haven’t seen No Country for Old Men more than once. Why do you ask?