The Herald - The Herald Magazine
Films of the Week Faith and infidelity in bleak surroundings
BASED on Nikolai Leskov’s 1865 novella Lady Macbeth Of The Mtsensk District (also the inspiration for an opera by Shostakovich and a 1962 film version by Polish great Andrzej Wajda) this acclaimed 2016 adaptation by first-time director William Oldroyd keeps the 19th century setting but switches the action from western Russian to the north east of England. If you know your Shakespeare, you’ll know from the title this isn’t going to be a comedy, and that there will be a woman at the heart of it with blood on her hands.
That woman is Katherine Lester (Florence Pugh, in her breakout role). As the action opens she has just been married to Alexander Lester (Paul Hilton), an older man she doesn’t love, and taken by him to live in the cold and draughty Northumberland manor he shares with his father, Boris (Christopher Fairbank). Ruthless colliery owners rather than genteel landed gentry, the Lester men view Katherine as just another item of property, one which is expected to remain meek and demure. Beneath her impassive gaze, Katherine has other ideas and when she saves housemaid Anna from being ridiculed by farmhands – they’ve hoisted her in a sling in a barn and are attempting to weight her as if she were a cow – she has her first fateful encounter with Sebastian (Cosmo Jarvis). Lust ignites fast.
So far, so Lady Chatterley. But what follows pitches us into a bleak and amoral psycho-drama rather than a study of sex and social mores. Katherine and Sebastian cocoon themselves in a passionate affair and become particularly brazen about it when both Boris and Alexander are called away on business. Then, when the outside world starts to impinge (even the local Minister knows what’s going on), they emerge to face the consequences and wreak their own particular form of havoc.
Young screenwriter Alice Birch subsequently co-write Normal People for the BBC, many critics’ top TV drama of 2020, and is now a key member of the writing team on Succession,
Jesse Armstrong’s award-winning (nine Emmys and counting)
HBO drama. Pugh, meanwhile, went on to star in folk horror hit Midsommar (watch Lady Macbeth and you’ll understand why) and was then cast in Greta Gerwig’s blockbuster adaptation
of Little Woman, in which she plays Amy March. Both women pulled in film festival awards aplenty for their efforts in Lady Macbeth, with Pugh taking a slew of Best Actress accolades and Birch winning Best Screenplay at the British Independent Film Awards as well as a BAFTA for Outstanding Debut.
SAINT MAUD Curzon Home Cinema Now streaming
ONE of the hits of 2020, this intelligent and stylish horror from first-time British director Rose Glass stars Welsh actress Morfydd Clark as the titular Maud, an ex-NHS nurse now working for a private agency and living in an un-named coastal town. Into that storyline, Glass introduces a range of themes running from self-harm and mental health to end-of-life care, loneliness and religious faith.
The film opens with Maud suffering flashbacks to some traumatic, work-related event and preparing for a new job as live-in carer for Amanda Kohl, an ex-dancer, choreographer and (as Maud says disdainfully in her narration) “a minor celebrity”. Amanda is dying of cancer but where Maud is strenuously devout, she is louche, drunken, high-handed and given to thoughtless verbal cruelty (as the nurse Maud is taking over from departs she describes her former employer as “a bit of a c***”).
So Maud buys Amanda’s champagne and helps serve at her parties, while all the time trying to act as some kind of saviour. Amanda gives her a book about William Blake and the two women appear to bond. But into this human drama comes an increasing feeling that something isn’t quite right. It starts with Amanda’s house, a conglomeration of midcentury furniture and Art Deco wallpaper – the set designers have had a field day – and continues with drip-fed bits of information about Maud’s back story and increasing numbers of scenes in which she is overtaken by some kind of religious rapture. The climax, a visual tour de force, is shocking but inevitable.
Clark is having a rip-roaring time at the moment. She starred as Mina Harker in Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat’s well-liked 2020 BBC adaptation of Dracula, and will soon be seen playing Galadriel in Amazon’s epic (and epically expensive) five season adaptation of Lord Of The Rings. Meanwhile Rose Glass, still in her 20s when she shot Saint Maud, has established herself as one of the hottest young British directors around.