The Tragedy of Macbeth starring Denzel Washington as Lord Macbeth and Frances McDormand as Lady Macbeth is Joel Coen's first film without his brother Ethan. Yet this 2021 adaptation of Shakespeare's tale of madness and violence remains firmly rooted in the Coen brothers' brand of idiosyncratic filmmaking. Washington in the lead role was an audacious choice.
But he's not the first black actor to inhabit the part. Orson Welles 1936 staging of "Voodoo Macbeth" featured an all black cast with unknown Jack Carter in the lead. It has been reported that Washington was the only actor Coen considered. And as expected the internet, or Hissy Fit Guild erupted into feverish whinging over matters of authenticity: Washington can't be Macbeth! There were no black people in 15th century Scotland!
I suppose authenticity depends on who's defining it, especially where Shakespeare “purists” are concerned. I would be remiss not to point out that for centuries multitudes have lauded white actors portraying Othello in black face, the most familiar being Laurence Olivier and Anthony Hopkins. Racism provided a convenient means to authenticate Othello on colonialist terms given that during the Bard’s lifetime black actors were supposedly nonexistent, thereby sanctioning white actors in black grease paint for all eternity. Or so they thought. During the early to mid-twentieth century, African American actors Paul Robeson and James Earl Jones did their best to fill the void. But it was contemporary culture’s surprising hypersensitivity around political incorrectness that finally rendered the black faced Moor obsolete. Laurence Fishburne, Chiwetel Ejiofor, André Holland, and Clark Peters quintessential interpretations of General Othello restored much needed equity.
Denzel Washington is a Shakespeare veteran having played Richard lll at the New York Shakespeare Festival, Prince Aragon in Kenneth Branagh’s film, "Much Ado About Nothing," and on Broadway in the starring role as Julius Caesar. He is not only an astonishingly versatile actor but a movie star whose innate magnetism lends itself to Shakespeare characterizations. While it’s often necessary to define equity within the context of race and ethnicity, what is obvious is that Washington never defines himself within the narrow perceptions of others, invariably choosing roles which stretch and challenge his abilities. Washington is first and foremost an actor. Not a black actor. An actor. So why shouldn't he play the paranoid murderous Scotsman?
Traditionalists are plagued by selective memory. They conveniently forget that Shakespeare's plays are studies in human behavior, mirrors held up to our lamentable predilections to destroy one another. And while the naysayers would have us believe otherwise, Macbeth is not so much about cultural identity but the vicissitudes of human nature. The profoundly flawed Lord Macbeth traded his humanity for evil. Washington capably inhabited those flaws so as to create a human psyche gone awry. This is the type of challenge actors love. And the type of prowess directors seek. What does equity look like? Skill and merit. Fearlessness. Embodying paradox. Washington's Macbeth is a singular performance in service to Joel Coen's distinctive vision of Shakespeare's tragedy of human suffering: The art.