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Lady Macbeth
2016 86 min United Kingdom R 16+
★7.1
Drama
Director: William Oldroyd
🎭 Based on
«Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District»
byNikolai Leskov
Trailers
EN
EN
Teaser
EN
EN
EN
Description
Rural England, 1865. Katherine, suffocated by her loveless marriage to a bitter man and restrained by his father's tyranny, unleashes an irresistible force within her, so powerful that she will stop at nothing to get what she wants.
US Gross:
$1.13M
Worldwide:
$5.25M
Starring
Florence Pugh
Actor
Cosmo Jarvis
Actor
Paul Hilton
Actor
Awards
San Sebastián International Film Festival 2016
— FIPRESCI Prize
European Film Awards 2017
— Discovery of the Year
Goya Awards 2018
— Best European Film
European Film Awards 2017
— Discovery of the Year
European Film Awards 2017
— Best Actress
BAFTA 2018
— Best Debut (Screenplay, Direction or Production)
BAFTA 2018
— Alexander Korda Award for Outstanding British Film
Key opinion
Lady Macbeth (2016) is a polarizing adaptation that transplants Nikolai Leskov's Russian novella into a stark 19th-century British setting. While critics and audiences largely praise Florence Pugh’s intense debut performance and the film's precise, atmospheric visual style, viewers remain divided over the screenplay's departures from the source material and the perceived coldness of its narrative.
| Acting | Florence Pugh delivers a captivating, complex debut performance that anchors the film's psychological intensity. | |
| Cinematography | The cinematography and production design utilize cold, static, and painterly visuals to effectively heighten the tension of the isolated setting. | |
| Direction | The film's minimalist aesthetic, characterized by an absence of a traditional musical score and sparse dialogue, creates a deliberate, immersive sense of monotony and oppression. | |
| Adaptation | Opinions on the screenplay are divided: supporters praise the bold reinterpretation of the source material's ending and themes, while critics argue the adaptation is superficial, logically inconsistent, and fails to capture the soul of the original novella. |