After her husband confronts her and threatens to put her back in her place, she brings Sebastian into her room and the two murder and bury him. Sebastian suffers a beating and confinement from Boris, so she calmly poisons her father-in-law in front of Anna, who turns mute after the terrifying incident. This affair, which Katherine pursues and continues with girlish delight, is quickly discovered and leads to the murders that the Lady Macbeth title anticipates. It’s very uncomfortable to watch Katherine give in to such a man, and then essentially fall in love with him despite, or because of, his inability to honor her initial “no.” This trope, where a man essentially forces himself on a woman because he’s aware of her attraction, is a damaging one that romantic films especially are guilty of. The two begin a sexual relationship, with Sebastian first forcing his way into her room. It’s in many ways sexual, as the formerly powerless Katherine replicates the control her husband had over her with another man. In their first confrontation, she forces Sebastian to face the wall and in that moment, she senses a kind of power. However, this element of the plot is mostly pushed aside to focus on Katherine, who is intrigued by this situation and develops an attraction to Sebastian. We’re meant to understand Anna’s pain, and how Sebastian’s physical, as well as verbal abuse (he calls her a “sow”), later traumatizes her as she cries by herself with no one to confide in, as far as we see. It’s at this time that she meets Sebastian (Cosmo Jarvis), a farm hand, as he and other men are suspending a black housemaid, Anna (Naomi Ackie), from the roof. Eventually, a small amount of relief arrives when Boris and Alexander leave the estate, and she’s there alone with the servants. The movie portrays this with constant scene of her looking stifled, trapped in the camera as her hair is tied up, her posture stiff from corsets, and her own manner stiff. His demands that Katherine quickly produce an heir and behave properly starts to drive Katherine further and further into snapping. His father, Boris, is just as controlling. In one very uncomfortable scene, he orders her to face the wall while he pleases himself. More than once, he abruptly demands she strip naked as he watches from across the room. The story begins with the marriage of Katherine and Alexander, a man many times her age who treats her like an object, demanding she stay in the confines of the house and sexually objectifying her. Still, the British setting, along with certain casting choices, add a new layer of racial tension and commentary on the societal restraints on women. Lady Macbeth is an adaptation of a 19th century Russian novel by Nikolai Leskov that first appeared in a magazine by Dostoyevsky’s, something that is no surprise considering the very Russian approach to guilt and violence. That journey, however, is one that rarely fares well for the 19th-century lady. Oldroyd’s Lady Macbeth, a young girl named Katherine (Florence Pugh), is a wife trapped in a loveless marriage who uses violence in an effort to attain some kind of freedom. Shakespeare’s Lady Macbeth was the ambitious wife of a tragic hero known for her ruthlessness and haunting guilt. The British film Lady Macbeth, directed by William Oldroyd, immediately shrouds the female protagonist with a murderous and anti-hero air. Warning: Spoilers for the 2016 film Lady Macbeth.
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