Delayed Reaction: Lady Macbeth

The Pitch: What happens if a neglected housewife in 19th century England does something about her situation?

A young woman, ignored by her husband begins having an affair and arranges to make her home life more bearable.

I can't remember why I was so excited to get to Lady Macbeth, because I was quite excited. It was already at the top of my Netflix DVD queue before I saw it was on HBOGo, at which point, I watched it immediately. The trailer for it certainly looked eerie, similar to The Witch but not a horror movie. A big part of my excitement, no doubt, was Florence Pugh in the lead role. It doesn't take much to make me watch something with a young, dark haired British actress in the lead role. It helps that I heard raves about her performance from assorted reviewers. Maybe I still needed something to scratch the itch that Tulip Fever failed to. Much of Lady Macbeth is a stripped down, less ambitious version of Tulip Fever. It's better than that movie though. It pretty much has to be due to law of averages and what not.

Any fan of Shakespeare should be able to guess a lot about this movie by the title alone. Perhaps the title of the short story its based on, Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk Distric, says a bit more. Pugh plays a newlywed woman, Katherine, who marries a man half her age who has no interest in her. Her husband is a jerk. Her father in law, who lives with them, is possibly even worse. Both father and son leave for a while (days if not weeks). Even more bored than before, Katherine begins an affair with one of the men who works the land. As word gets out about this affair, Katherine decides to do something about it. This movie is still new and unheard of enough that I'd rather not spoil things, but again, the title is very appropriate.

Pugh is very good. She pulls off a wide range of traits. I sympathized with her for longer than she deserved. I feel like she loses or gains 10 years on a whim. Sometimes she's a bored little girl playing house, and other times she's a calculating, authoritarian housewife. She's comfortably out of place in this time period. She's strategically too modern in a way that fits. I'll be curious to see her in something more modern now, so I can figure out if she's just inherently anachronistic or if that's something she brings specifically to this role. And before you ask: No. I'm not sure what I mean by all that either. It makes sense in my head, not necessarily in my words.

The scope of the movie is pretty limited. It only leaves her house and the surrounding property a couple times. There are few characters. I didn't notice this as a detriment though. It fits her boredom and confinement. The story doesn't hold your hand through everything. Certain story beats aren't explained right away or made clear at all. Once or twice I looked up the Wikipedia summary because I thought I missed something, only to discover that my question was answered a scene or two later. It does have one of those "OK, and?" endings though. The kind that's intentionally a little unsatisfying. I appreciate it more with a little distance. At the time, it was a little deflating.

Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend