Lady Macbeth **** (2016, Florence Pugh, Christopher Fairbank, Cosmo Jarvis) – Movie Review

Director William Oldroyd’s film adaptation of Russian author Nikolai Leskov’s novella Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk is a riveting, tough-toned and chilling nail-biter.

Giving it her all and a bit more, Florence Pugh is memorable as Katherine Lester, the initially submissive 19th century young bride sold into marriage to a wealthy, abusive middle-aged landowner (Christopher Fairbank) a remote British countryside manor. The ‘initially submissive’ of course is the clue.

[Spoiler alert] The worm will turn, of course, and when it does, she turns big time, and on pretty much everybody. She becomes a monster. If this is a feminist story promoting women’s rights, it is a scary one. It is a horror story. But Leskov and screenwriter Alice Birch ensure that is a complex one, covering many bases, and subtly and intelligently too.

Shooting sparely in long takes and without music, Oldroyd films it somewhere between a Bergman movie and a Midsomer Murders-style thriller. That is a tall order you would think, but he brings it off triumphantly. Rarely has less seemed so much, much more.

Also in the cast are Cosmo Jarvis, Naomi Ackie and Bill Fellows.

© Derek Winnert 2017 Movie Review

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