Enter the Nightmarish World of Joel Coen’s <em>Macbeth</em>
Denzel Washington leads a magnificent ensemble in this stark, minimalist adaptation of a Shakespearean tragedy.
Why would Joel Coen want to film an adaptation of ? The director’s , which until now had always involved collaboration with his brother, Ethan, is mostly confined to stories set in America in the 19th or 20th century—crime thrillers, black comedies, Westerns, careful studies of characters balanced on some kind of mental precipice. Indeed, even Joel Coen that he could make only because his brother had decided to take a break from movies. “If I was working with Ethan I wouldn’t have done, it would not be interesting to him,” he said in one interview.
