Film Review: Lady Macbeth

Set in 1865, Edward Oldroyd’s Lady Macbeth transports its source material (Russian novel Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk by Nikolai Leskov) to an austere house in Northumberland, where Catherine (Florence Pugh) is trapped in a loveless arranged marriage to the older Alexander.  Though initially frustrated by the restrictions imposed on her by her husband, when Alexander leaves to attend to an accident at one of the family’s mills, Catherine begins to exert her power over the household and its servants, including shed-dwelling workman Sebastian.

                  Some viewers will be familiar with much of what’s on offer here –  wayward lass, brawny servant, pinched puritanical elders, desolate moorland – but the film puts an intriguing spin on these well-worn elements and Lady Macbeth’s slow pace and beautiful photography has its own unique hypnotic effect. Catherine’s boredom with life within the cold whitewashed walls of the house is brilliantly captured by the lingering shots of Pugh sitting in full wifely attire on a couch, staring directly at the camera.  The stillness of life on the estate is also accentuated by the lack of a music on the soundtrack and the comparative loudness of creaky doors opening and closing and the echo of footsteps in corridors.

                In a film short on dialogue, there are memorable turns by a flinty Christopher Fairbank as Foster’s father and Naomi Ackie as a servant caught between masters, but the magnetic Pugh (last seen in a similarly compelling role in Carol Morley’s The Falling) is the quiet centre of the film, her inscrutable expression at the heart of the mystery of this curious mood piece.