Screw Your Courage

In the torrid Lady Macbeth, Oppression flows in all directions.

- David Edelstein

IN THE GORGEOUSLY harsh Lady Macbeth, the then-19-year-old actress Florence Pugh plays young Katherine, who is essentially purchased by an elderly northern England industrialist in the 19th century to marry his son and give his estate an heir—which is difficult to accomplish given that her new, abrasive spouse prefers her to face the wall, naked, while he noisily pleasures himself. By day, she is commanded not to venture out of doors, and so she sits, her waist tightly corseted, her hoop skirt spread wide, on a sofa, awaiting the return of the man who will only make her feel belittled, attended to by a black maid named Anna ( Naomi Ackie) plainly too timid (or terrified) to bond with her mistress in their shared servitude.

What feels modern in Lady Macbeth is Pugh’s Katherine, who manifests an extreme aversion to demureness. She has flashing, insolent eyes on a face as wide as a painter’s canvas, and her throaty voice drips with irony and contempt. There are stunning shots of Katherine striding along the windswept coastal moors that summon comparisons to the Brontës and Hardy, but Northumberland borders the Scottish Low lands and the trace of a brogue allies her not just with dominated women but dominated people of all kinds. The audience roots for Katherine to give it back to her smug white quasi-captors on behalf of all subjugated people everywhere. This becomes a problem when Katherine begins to kick not just up but down.