There are infinite ways of telling time-honoured classic stories, it is indeed possible to re-read a text from a variety of points of view.
You can transport, for example, famous operas in modern times and reinvent them or you can tell a Shakespeare play from an entirely new perspective, adding more nuances, meanings and layers. Joel Coen went for example for an architecture and textile approach in his "The Tragedy of Macbeth" (2021)
Most of us may remember the plot of Shakespeare's play: three witches (played by stage star and contortionist Kathryn Hunter) tell Macbeth (Denzel Washington) that he will become king.
The Scottish warlord shares the prophecy with his wife (Frances McDormand) who persuades him to murder King Duncan (Brendan Gleeson) and take his place.
After the horrible deed is accomplished, power prompts Macbeth to kill others around him and he starts getting haunted by his crimes, while Lady Macbeth loses her fierce composure and sleepwalks towards madness into her death.
Coen's black and white film (the first project he's directed without his brother Ethan) is definitely not your usual Macbeth representation.
For this tragedy of madness and mayhem, Coen considered previous adaptations such as Orson Welles' and Akira Kurosawa's "Throne of Blood" (in which the drama is transposed to feudal Japan), but then he tried to break from the past and in particular from Roman Polanski's version of the film, taking out all ornaments such as carpets, torches and chandeliers, and stripped everything down, reducing sets to basics.
The film's style evokes German Expressionism and the director invited production designer Stefan Dechant to consider a series of films: Carl Theodor Dreyer's "The Passion of Joan of Arc" (1928) for its close-ups and sobriety; Fritz Lang's "Die Nibelungen: Siegfried "(1924) for the simplicity of the structures in this film; abstracted and expressionistic Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau's "Sunrise" (1927), and Charles Laughton's "The Night of the Hunter" (1955) and Orson Welles' "Citizen Kane" (1941) for its matte paintings, but you can see in some of the noir moods elements of Carol Reed's "The Third Man" as well.
Art-wise, the film was inspired by geometric sketches by 20th century avant-garde theatre designer Edward Gordon Craig and sublime moods that may have been borrowed from the "Wanderer above the Sea of Fog", the oil painting by German Romantic artist Caspar David Friedrich.
These references ensure the film remains in the cinematic rather than the theatrical dimension, even tough the theatrical form is preserved in the cinematic space and you get the impression you're watching the actors playing on a stage.
Space has a key role in this film: it is architectural, supernatural and psychogeographical as it is the locus of the actions, but it also shifts and evolves with the characters.
Quite often scenes are shot from above, to provide us with an aerial perspective, a bird's eye view that evokes the three raven-morphing witches.
Architecture can be considered as one of the protagonists of the film: at the beginning of the story we are in an uncertain and undefined space.
Fog covers the sets as we are in the realm of the supernatural and of witchcraft. Then, little by little, the action moves into tents and buildings and in a brutalist castle with minimalist interior decor, while the grey shade of the first scenes turns into a more intense black-and-white dichotomy.
The monumental architectures we see, a combination of medieval scale and modernist straight lines, integrate numerous arches, concrete pillars, beams and windows.
Pictures of Casa Luis Barragán in Mexico City, with its square tower with two walls, by photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto (View this photo) inspired these scenes in which buildings are reduced to their basic essence with bare walls, cold floors and high ceilings. At times characters are just silhouettes against the severe architectures.
It’s impossible not to see a touch of Escher's infinite architectures in the intersections between arches and staircases. Besides, some shots evoke the former residence of sculptor Xavier Corberó, a labyrinthine construction in the outskirts of Barcelona with 9 buildings connected with around 300 Roman-influenced archways.
In Coen's "Macbeth" the arches have a purpose as they contribute to give an obsessive feeling to the sets and scenes. Built on wheels so that they could be moved at any time for the camera, the arches create lights and shadows, and a heightened sense of madness.
This alternation between lights and shadows hints at the doubts of Macbeth, hesitant at first about murdering the king and then feeling guilty once the horrible deed is accomplished.
Light is a graphic element in the film that also features a lot of geometries creating volumes, such as tall rectangles, crisscrossing diagonals, oppressing arches, open ceilings (at times the geometries evoke sets for Fritz Lang's "Metropolis").
Light also delineates a dagger that looks as if it were fluctuating in the space in front of Macbeth, even though when he finally approaches it, we realise it's nothing supernatural, but just the door handle on the King's bedroom door.
Some of the best scenes are created via architectural elements: the three witches crouch on the wooden beams of Macbeth's spartan room (there are just a few pieces of furniture in the film, such as a simple bed and a concrete table with a carafe and a glass, sparse settings and props hinting at the main characters' emptiness of the heart and soul, replaced by a thirst for power) and throw ingredients not into a cauldron, but onto the floor of his room that starts boiling.
The entire room turns therefore into a cauldron, almost hinting at Macbeth's own mind, boiling with guilt and with the exhaustion caused by his actions.
Towards the end of the film there is a parallelism between the pillars in the throne room and the trees in Birnam Wood; the two environments also merge when leaves blow into the throne room that suddenly (thanks to matte paintings and VFX that fill the environments) turns into a space inside a forest. Trees materialise where there were walls and the forest appears inside the castle (an idea of cinematographer Bruno Delbonnel).
Claustrophobic steep and narrow stairwells are juxtaposed to epic shots: Macbeth hides behind pillars while other characters look confined, almost stifled in the architectures, among them the Doctor and Lady-in-Waiting watching Lady Macbeth sleepwalking, or Macduff confronting Macbeth on the narrow battlement (an elegant scene that may have been taken from a stylish videogame).
One of the most epic shots features Lady Macbeth standing with her hair billowing on a rock, a physical representation of her psychological condition, of her mind on the brink of madness. The emphasis on verticality in the tall buildings and elongated arches is also a symbol of Macbeth and his wife's spiralling madness.
In some scenes the solid structures call to mind Second World War bunkers like the ones in Paul Virilio's classic book of wartime architectural history "Bunker Archeology" (was this another inspiration? Download Paul-Virilio-Bunker-Archaeology) or seem to bear echoes of Louis Kahn's monumental concrete architectures.
The sets were made combining old techniques, such as painted backgrounds, with the latest technologies: moving from sketches, sets were then designed by 3D modelers using Rhino, a software that guaranteed flexibility in design and allowed the director to quickly implement changes to architectural features and lights and shadows effects.
Architecture-wise the minimalist sets in this film are therefore rich, but they do not have much texture, an aspect brought in by costume designer Mary Zophres, who created architectures for the body. The black and white tones of the film helped her highlighting shapes, silhouettes, materials and woven textiles.
Rather than opting for shiny armours, Zophres created for the male characters a textured linen cotton under armour quilted tunic. In battle it is matched with a leather intrecciato armour (inspired by China's Terracotta Army) that wouldn't look out of place on the runway of a luxury house specialised in leather pieces à la Bottega Veneta. Its warp and weft technique evokes the Middle Ages, but also symbolically recreates a wearable light Vs shadow dichotomy, creating a rich texture.
Macbeth wears the same tunic and armour, but there is emphasis on the shoulders to indicate his power and masculinity. After killing Duncan, we see him wearing the king's starry cape, made with Valentino's fabric (the house's creative director Pierpaolo Piccioli is a friend of McDormand). The cape also creates a cinematic parallel with Bruno Delbonnel's shots of the night sky.
This garment brings a first physical change in Macbeth, but it is the crown that causes a sort of psychological transformation in the character. As soon as he wears it, he becomes more aggressive, paranoid and restless.
For Lady Macbeth, Zophres was inspired by a collection of architectural images Coen gave her: linear and graphic archways, colonnades and stairwells inspired the costume designer a clean cut wardrobe for this character.
When we first meet Lady Macbeth she is wearing a simple minimalist long gown with little embellishment in the form of a delicate embroidery around the neckline.
We then see her wearing a geometrical medieval cape in a textured wool, rigid and calling to mind the shape of a chess pieces. It is almost a reference to Piccioli's monastic Haute Couture for Valentino but it was actually inspired by an Elsa Schiaparelli cape and gives Lady Macbeth a sort of conical shape (replicated with a varying degree for all the female characters) confining the actor in a limiting silhouette.
As a queen her wardrobe becomes more elaborate and features a richly elaborate damasked gown; her descent into madness is instead marked by a simple nightgown that will eventually become a symbolical shroud.
Moses Ingram's Lady Macduff’s gown is characterised by the same silhouette, but the decorative motifs differentiate her character from Lady Macbeth. There is indeed a motif of leaves on Lady Macduff's gown, hinting at fertility and life; on the second gown we see on Lady Macbeth there is instead a feather motif that may also hint at the shape of a dagger.
Textiles characterised by an imperfect, almost rough surface (a detail that connects this film with Pasolini’s "Oedipus Rex") prevail for the other characters.
Kathryn Hunter as the three witches wears a worn out cloak with loosely knitted patches, a garment that facilitates the transition from human form to bird, while creating an essential difference between her and the other characters in pristine capes (some of them wear cloaks that create wonderful correspondences with the staircases or the other architecural features behind them, like the wooden doors).
One character finds a correspondence with the attire of the witches – Ross, played by Alex Hassell. Macduff's cousin, a Scottish noble, acts as an enigmatically ambiguous messenger, but in the film looks more like a priest.
He wears a long fitted tunic that highlights his slender silhouette and narrow hips and a cropped cape with elongated sleeves, a reference to medieval garments (like his pointy shoes), but also to wings and therefore to the witches who can turn into ravens.
Ross cuts a stunningly sharp silhouette, like another chess pieces, wherever he appears, in a dusty and foggy road, among the walls of the castle or in the forest.
What else could be said about this terrifying tragedy of blood, death, horrors and supernatural visions that takes place in architectural settings and with costumes that may distract textile designs from following the plot? Well, that it would be very intriguing to see an exhibition of costumes from this film.
Lady Macduff's gown originally came in an ochre shade with tones of orange and red so that it could pop in the black and white film, so seeing the costumes in real life would help us understanding even better the work behind the costumes and the intense research that Zophres did playing around with colours, silhouettes, materials and embellishments that allowed Coel to create on the big screen new depths, textures and a a mesmerising interplay of lights and shadows.
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