Lady Macbeth (film)

Development

Playwright Alice Birch shared the 1865 novella Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District by Nikolai Leskov with theatre director William Oldroyd. Creative England, BBC Films and the British Film Institute supported the iFeatures scheme to fund emerging talent making regional stories into low-budget features.^[6] Birch and Oldroyd pitched a story based on the novella to iFeatures.^[2] They received a micro budget for the first iFeatures period drama,^[1] and made the film for between US$440 and 650 thousand.^{[7]: 52 [8][9]} Lady Macbeth is the debut feature film for writer Birch, director Oldroyd,^[2] and producer Fodhla Cronin O'Reilly.^[1]

Pre-production

Set in 1865, Birch's screenplay moved the first part of the novella from a house in the town of Mtsensk, European Russia to a rural estate in Northumberland, England. Oldroyd knew the region from his time at university in neighbouring County Durham. It had period country houses, built with the proceeds of mining the Durham and Northumberland Coalfields, and rural landscapes that could still pass for the 19th century.^[5]

In the novella and the screenplay, Lady Macbeth commits three murders in her family's house then her lover confesses his part in the crimes and accuses her. The key difference between the novella and the screenplay is her response. In the novella, Lady Macbeth chooses to remain with her working-class lover by confessing then the story continues with their lives as convicts.^{[10]: chaps. XII–XV} While in the screenplay, Katherine Lester as Lady Macbeth chooses to remain a member of the landed gentry by framing her lover Sebastian and her maid Anna then the story ends.^[11] This meant the screenplay was set in one location: the Lester estate. Oldroyd's summary of the approach was "By focusing on a few people in one location who don’t change their clothes very often we could direct all our energy towards the story and realise a radical drama that just happened to be set in the past."^[2]

Oldroyd's research suggested that the region was more racially diverse in the 19th century than is generally believed today. He shared the view that all-white casts typical of British period dramas had reinforced this belief. Oldroyd and casting director Shaheen Baig took a colour-blind approach.^[12] In her second feature film and first lead role, Florence Pugh plays Katherine Lester.^[13] Naomi Ackie and Cosmo Jarvis make their feature debuts as Anna and Sebastian. Older and more established actors Paul Hilton and Christopher Fairbank play Alexander and Boris Lester. The landed gentry roles of the Lesters are played by white actors. But the successors to the male Lesters, murdered by Katherine, are played by actors of colour, who led the supporting cast:^[14] the established Golda Rosheuvel as Agnes and Anton Palmer, in his feature debut,as Teddy.^[15] The diversity continues in actors playing the principal servant roles: Ackie and Jarvis.^[14]

The Lady Macbeth crew included director of photography Ari Wegner, production designer Jacqueline Abrahams, costume designer Holly Waddington and editor Nick Emerson.^[16] The principal location was Lambton Castle, County Durham as the Lester estate.^[15][b] The film is largely set in the Lesters's house where the principal interiors are Katherine and Alexander's bedroom, the drawing room with a breakfast table and sofa, and the wood panelled dining room.^[7]: 58 To reflect the austere nature of house owner Boris Lester, the interiors were sparsely furnished with walls painted in cold period colours.^{[7]: 52–53, 59} According to Oldroyd, the production design was influenced by pared-back interiors and solitary people lit by cool daylight in the paintings of Danish artist Vilhelm Hammershøi (1864–1916).^[2] Lambton Castle has similar daylight;^[7]: 57 both County Durham and Southern Denmark are close to the 55th parallel north.

Filming

In September–October 2015,^[1] the Lady Macbeth screenplay was filmed chronologically in 24 days: one day at a moorland location and the rest at the principal location Lambton Castle.^{[7]: 53, 55–56} At the castle, director William Oldroyd and director of photography Ari Wegner worked alongside editor Nick Emerson.^[7]: 56 Wegner relied on natural light for indoor scenes by day. She mostly used the in-one method to record scenes with wide master shots, which minimised the need for further coverage.^{[7]: 54, 57}

Florence Pugh as Katherine Lester is on-screen for most of the film.^[5] She alternates between feeling constrained by other characters, particularly the Lester men, and feeling more relaxed, when she is walking around the estate or with her lover. Oldroyd and Wegner reflected Katherine's state of mind with camerawork. When constrained, the camera was locked to give a static frame around Katherine, while when relaxed, the camera was handheld and the frame moved with her.^[7]: 54 To reflect how the Lester men regarded Katherine as their property, the wide master shot with static frame was used indoors to create formal compositions of her and other belongings including a vase,^[7]: 55 a grandfather clock and the sofa.

Emerson generally cut scenes slightly shorter than a viewer might expect to keep the story moving.^[18] The two exceptions were violent acts by Katherine leading to death: shooting Alexander's horse and smothering Teddy. Each act plays out in one continuous shot, a wide master with static frame, to make it more confronting for the viewer. Wegner said this approach was influenced by the films of Michael Haneke.^[19]: 8:46

Post-production

The sound designers were Dan Jones and Ben Baird.^[20] They created an expressionist soundscape from recordings of people in the house and nature on the estate, which plays unnaturally loud in the film. The only music is an eerie theme,^[21] composed by Jones, which plays in the aftermath of Boris and Alexander's murders and from Anna remaining mute under questioning, following Teddy's murder, to the end of the film.

Critical response

On Rotten Tomatoes, Lady Macbeth has an approval rating of 89% based on 197 reviews.^[24] Letterboxd users rate the film as 3.4 out of five stars based on 85 reviews.^[25] On Metacritic, opinion on Lady Macbeth is generally favourable based on 61 user reviews.^[26] The film also received positive responses from professional film critics. Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian newspaper gave it a maximum five stars.^[27] Cath Clarke writing in Time Out magazine and Mark Kermode in The Observer newspaper awarded the film four of five stars,^[3][20] while Christy Lemire gave it three of four stars on the Roger Ebert website.^[28] Although Guy Lodge did not give a rating in Variety magazine, he wrote "An impressively stark, narratively ruthless Victorian chamber piece that feels about as modern as its crinolines will permit, [director] William Oldroyd's pristine debut feature slowly reveals a violent moral ambiguity that needles the mind far longer than its polite period-piece trappings suggest."^[16]

The final cut of Lady Macbeth is 89 minutes long,^[29] and Florence Pugh as Katherine Lester is on-screen for 90% of the running time.^[5] All five critics and Rotten Tomatoes praised her performance. Kermode wrote, "Here Pugh walks a tightrope between audience sympathy and revulsion, a dramatic balancing act that she pulls off with aplomb," and Lemire agreed. The critics, except Clarke, also praised the performance of Naomi Ackie as Anna. Lemire contrasted the two actors with "As showy as Pugh's performance is externally, Ackie does just as much mostly wordlessly with just her eyes and her presence, especially as the situation grows more extreme." These are generally regarded as Pugh and Ackie's breakthrough roles.

The critics, except Lemire, said the racially diverse casting of Lady Macbeth adds to the drama and continues a trend in British period features which includes the 2011 film Wuthering Heights directed by Andrea Arnold (also starring Paul Hilton) and the 2013 film Belle by Amma Asante. Bradshaw wrote "[Lady Macbeth] does an awful lot with a limited budget.", and Kermode agreed.

According to Clarke and Lodge, Lady Macbeth is a feminist cautionary tale. However, in a 2018 thematic analysis, Desirée de Jesus wrote that classifying the film as feminist because Katherine Lester rids herself of the patriarchy was simplistic. According to de Jesus, the oppression experienced by each character in Lady Macbeth depended on the intersection of their gender, class and race.^[14]

Accolades