While The Tragedy of MacBeth’s sound and cinematography are outstanding, along with OF COURSE, Denzel as a vision to behold and his flawless recitation of Shakespeare solidifies his G.O.A.T. status, in addition to an opposite but equally impressive way, as Frances takes her “I woke up like this” simplicity look and spins it into acting gold, I wanted to highlight a one scene wonder by Sarasota ‘native’ Stephen Root.
But first, props to Joel Coen for not only scaling down Shakespeare into a moving bite size portion, but for hiring the geniuses that worked on the sound and cinematography. I won’t take credit for a pod I heard that referenced the film being reminiscent of a German style, but will take it one more specific step further to say the black and white images were so crisp, they brought to mind Bergman’s masterpiece The Seventh Seal.
But back to Stephen Root who I cleverly (sure my horn bloweth) alluded to in the title of this blog. Sure Stephen is not dyslexic, but he is only 5 feet 9, so size wise my Rudy Ruettiger comparison might be apt. My point being, Stephen is playing with Notre Dame level acting titans, The Fighting Scottish as it were (see my aforementioned genuflecting to Denzel and Frances), and yet, shines in a magnificent way in his one scene wonder as the drunken comic foil Porter (a name that surely works). His monologue is not only funny, drunken man complaining about his ‘sword’ not working so well under the drink’s spell, but also importantly foreshadowing what else stops working when folks make rash decisions.
While I can’t put The Tragedy into my top ten, I certainly appreciated the concise perfection, and more importantly, giving Stephen Root a chance to shine (mind you I did not say wax) his own acting prowess.
