When Dmitri Shostakovich plucked Nikolai Leskov’s Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District from relative obscurity and turned it into an opera, he edited out the Lady’s most heinous crime to make his lead more palatable. When screenwriter Alice Birch turned the work into a film, she did the opposite. While it might not usher in debates about hell — whether it’s other people or of our own making — this latest literary adaptation may well bring on an onslaught of sexy corset-busters.
Florence Pugh’s Katherine is irresistible. In the opera, Shakespeare’s villain is reimagined as the embodiment of protest against bourgeois society — not innocent, but on the right side of history. In the film, Katherine veers from relatable to terrifying. Yet much as I love an unlovable heroine, Lady Macbeth is problematic.
Rapey aggression leads to passion. Characters wander in and out of the action without explanation. And we never know what motivates the husband (Paul Hilton). Yet it could be all this that’s unspoken, coupled with Pugh’s unapologetic portrayal of Katherine, that kept me riveted.
It's possible that because I didn’t know until about three-quarters of the way through whether Katherine ever had sex with her husband, I stayed engaged trying to figure it out. The same could be said of the main witness, Anna (Naomi Ackie), whose actions were unclear until almost the end. As the story unfolded, however, the hero target kept moving and I kept having to try to figure out whom to root for.
It surely wasn’t Katherine’s love interest Sebastian (Cosmo Jarvis), that guy is a dick. In fact [SPOILER ALERT], we learn Katherine didn’t have sex with her husband when Sebastian suggests that maybe she was the problem. Plus the rapey grossness is on him. I don’t care that he’s got milky skin and doe eyes — at least when he has his shirt on, and isn’t dirty, and/or lying in dirt.
But these suspensions of disbelief are par for the course in a period drama, and the frisson throughout is pitch-perfect. Pugh bolts in and out of scenes, huffing and hair atumble. Director William Oldroyd does much with little in his first (and thus perhaps not surprisingly low-budget) feature. What I can’t quite see past is lauding Katherine's cunning as “feminist subtext.”
Sure, marriage can be viewed as a construct that imprisons women economically and sexually. But was it marriage that shackled women, or societal expectation? And was that expectation not borne out of fear of the murderous woman? Vagina dentata is exactly what we get in Katherine, voracious in her appetites. Of course, love can’t save Katherine either, that’s a bourgeois construct, too. In the end, Katherine’s misery remains. Hell, it would seem, is inflicted and imposed (even in the throes of passion).
Much as I don’t want things tied up with a bow, when it comes to statements about feminism, this isn’t one I’m going to claim. Make no mistake, the film is masterfully done, a love-to-hate kind of experience. The idea that a female lead can take what she wants and get it, too, is gratifying. Plus I'm forever indebted to Birch for writing a scene of infidelity where the woman is not merely unashamed, but defiant. That on-screen moment alone puts this movie on the must-see list.
Lisa L. Kirchner is the author of the critically-acclaimed Hello American Lady Creature: What I Learned as a Woman in Qatar. Her work has appeared in book anthologies, magazines & newspapers including The Washington Post and Salon.com. Celebrity interviews include: Amy Sedaris, Xavier Dolan and John Sayles. At one time she was simultaneously the dating columnist for an alternative newsweekly, bridal editor for a society rag and the religion reporter for a gay and lesbian newspaper. More at lisalkirchner.com.
This article appears in Jul 27 – Aug 3, 2017.