The greed, duplicitous plotting, double crossing, and murder in Fargo make that film feel like a Shakespearian tragedy, so, in retrospect, it seems obvious that the Coens would tackle the Scottish play, one of the Bard’s most famous and celebrated works.
Only, for the first time in their filmmaking lives, The Tragedy of Macbeth isn’t a collaboration between the Coen brothers. After nearly four decades of making movies together, The Tragedy of Macbeth is the first solo film by Joel Cohen. His stripped down, almost ascetic, version of the Shakespeare work is, simply put, a masterpiece.
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Let me tell you a story. Have you heard of the Broadway musical Hamilton? Of course you have. Well, the guy who created it and launched a phenomenon wrote another musical before he set the world on fire with Hamilton. It was called In the Heights, and it was also a success, running a little under three years for 1,184 performances on Broadway. After having seen the touring version of Hamilton, the filmed version of the Broadway production – the world is waiting for a proper movie version – and listening to the cast recording on repeat (my wife fell in love with it when the show really caught fire in 2016), I felt I had a handle on what creator Lin-Manuel Miranda is all about. After seeing the film adaptation of In the Heights, that assessment is confirmed. LMM is a champion of unabashed optimism and joy.
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