By Emilio Frenk.
Director: William Oldryod
Cast: Florence Pugh, Cosmo Jarvis, Paul Hilton, Naomie Ackie, Christopher Fairbank, Golda Rosheuvel and Bill Fellows.
Rating: Excellent.
British director William Oldryod, makes his feature film debut with “Lady Macbeth”, a movie that gained critical acclaim in last year´s Toronto Film Festival and I was very pleased with the result of this film.
Based in the novel “Lady Macbeth of the Mtskenk District” by Nikolai Leskov, The movie takes place in the eighteen hundreds in rural England and tells the story of Katherine (Florence Pugh) a young bride who has been sold to Alexander (Paul Hilton).
Katherine lives under a strict schedule and she cannot leave the house. One day Katherine´s life will change when she meets Sebastian (Cosmo Jarvis) an employee who works in her estate.
She will feel attracted to him and both begin to have an intense affair that can lead to terrible consequences.
Katharine is aware of this situation and will want to continue with her affair at any costs, even if it means loosing everything.
“Lady Macbeth” not only is a very good drama film, but is an intense thriller.
The screenplay written Alice Birch, which happens to be her debut screenplay is very well written and the characters she gave voice to were really good.
I like the fact that the movie is straight forward and the theme is not complicated at all.
When I saw the title of this film I thought that it was taken by a William Shakespeare play but that was not the case.
William Oldryod´s direction was very good and directed a cast filled with unknowns who gave remarkable performances, specially Florence Pugh who portrays Katherine with so much intensity.
This type of films are very well known for the heavy Production Design that is involved and “Lady Macbeth” was not the exception.
On the other hand I was very skeptical on the film and I thought that it was going to be the typical period piece with a killer length and filled with clichés but it was not the case and it goes very fast.
I felt that also the movie is a full frontal criticism towards the abuse of power and the consequences of making bad decisions.
The movie in the beginning of the second act gets even more intense when all the bad things begin to happen and Katherine´s character takes a radical turn.
I was very impressed with this film and it plays with the intensity and with the drama, which is very complicated to do in a movie like this one.
I do think that Florence Pugh has a bright future ahead of her and I hope we can see good things from her.
William Oldoyd did a very good job with his directing and Alice Birch wrote a very good screenplay and I hope we continue to see some of their good work as well.
“Lady Macbeth” is a really good movie and I give a huge recommendation to it.