My Favorite Films, Plague Editions (Vol. 9): Lady Macbeth goes Wild

Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, op. 29 (1934)
Composed by Dmitri Shostakovitch

Siberian Lady Macbeth (1962)
Directed by Andrzej Wajda
Starring Olivera Marković

Lady Macbeth (2016)
Directed by William Oldroyd
Starring Florence Pugh

Last week I talked quite a bit about Lady Macbeth as the co-protagonist of Shakespeare’s famed tragedy. But she actually has stirred up a bit of an entertainment industry of her own. In 1865 the Russian writer Nikolai Leskov wrote a novella called A Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District. It was far ahead of its time in exploring issues of adultery and the subjugation of women. His works were generally banned, ignored or reviled then as far too wicked and corrupting for the time. But Dostoyevsky was an admirer, and published his novella in his literary magazine. The fame of this work was such that Dmitri Shostakovich made it into an opera in 1934 (it was again banned as corrupting and got the composer in big trouble), then was later made into films in 1962 and 2016, the subject of this review.

So what’s all the fuss about, and how does Lady Macbeth fit into all this? Well, first of all its not “Lady Macbeth”, its “A Lady Macbeth”, by which Leskov means a woman who murders. The character Katerina is pretty far from the actual Lady Macbeth. Shakespeare’s character is a pure sociopath. The only possible stimulus for her murderous plotting is the trauma of a recent miscarriage, and that is barely mentioned by Shakespeare. No, she is just plain evil. On the other hand, Leskov’s Katerina has plenty of reason to murder first her tyrannical stepfather (feeding him poisoned mushrooms) then her adulterous, abusive husband (she brains him with a poker). She is confined, slapped around, isolated in a dismal cabin, without rights or entertainment. When she finally catches the eye of the hunky peasant worker Sergei, she quickly falls into a torrid affair with him, and murders anyone who wants to obstruct her newfound independence and fun. So stepdad and hubby must die. She is finally caught, convicted, and sent on a long march to Siberia. She jumps into a frozen river after her boyfriend cheats on her, dragging his new girlfriend down into the frozen depths. So, lots of ice, vodka, abuse, and frozen tundra, typical of Russian tragedy. Shostakovich portrayed all this very explicitly in his opera, with percussion effects during domestic abuse, eerie violin harmonics on the ice-covered steppes, and a glissando-ing trombone (an obscene version of Bolero) during Katarina’s torrid adulterous sex scenes.

Each of these film treatments is very well done, and conveys the proper Russian sense of repression and doom. Siberian Lady Macbeth (Fury is a Woman) by Polish director Andrzej Wajda tells the story pretty straight-on. Wajda is perhaps best known for his Oscar-winning The Promised Land (1975) about the horrors of urban industrial capitalism. His “Lady Macbeth” is a tough, cynical woman who expects nothing from life or men in general. But when she sees the opportunity for forbidden fruit with the hunky peasant, she goes for it with passion. Wajda’s style is hyper-realistic. We feel cold as we sit in the frozen cabin. We feel hungry as the morsels of food are distributed. Just as intended, we are sympathetic with Katarina the woman, but not by her actions or behavior—Wajda makes her sympathetic yet frightening, a difficult balance. Throughout, a major character is Russia itself. There are lots of crane shots, icy rivers, and chain-gangs disappearing into the landscape. Given that the original novel was written in 1865, we see how Stalin’s purges and genocide were simply part of a long tradition of abuse of the populace. Russians have perhaps more trauma to work out of the collective consciousness than any other European country, and this film demonstrates that well.

I really liked Scottish director William Oldroyd’s Lady Macbeth (2016). Here we have Leskov’s Katarina still in 1865, but now in the UK, in the form of a pretty, young aristocratic girl (Florence Pugh) sold off to a brutal family in dreary Northumbria in northeast England. The stepfather and husband have much the same abusive male behavior as in the Leskov Russian version, perhaps even more brutal. Pugh (b. 1996)  is dynamite as Katherine Lester, alternating boredom, intense sexuality, and sociopathic brutality in equal measures. Her “Lady Macbeth” is closer to the original. It looks like she enjoys murdering the abusive men around her, not just doing it out of rage or frustration. So this is more of a feminist version, where women get to be just as despicable as the men around them. Pugh delivers one of the best acted roles I have seen in recent years, and is a good reason for you to see this film. The plot, like the other versions mentioned, sticks pretty close to the original, a testament to the quality of the Leskov novella. However the ending is a bit different. No chain-gang to Siberia here. Katherine turns on her hunky boyfriend in the end, as he is too weak to stand up to a police investigation of the murders, and she is ultimately left not dead, but isolated and alone in a society that will not take women seriously. The mood and cinematography of this film convey the gloom and repression of the story just as effectively as the Russian versions. As in many British films, there is a big overtone of class prejudice in this one as well. Katherine may sleep with a worker, but feels clearly superior to him, and abuses him in her own way, so again we are prevented from true sympathy with an abused woman. 

What is fascinating about the three treatments I have mentioned is how all stay quite loyal to the original Leskov source, just updating it for the different eras of their composition. When the libraries reopen I really must read the  original.