The Tragedy of Macbeth (2021) directed by Joel Coen is a movie with fascinating visuals. Even though it was filmed in 2021, the director made the choice to have the film in black and white, and strip the visuals down to just the essentials. This film helped me understand Expressionism in art and film a little better. The Scream is usually brought up as a classic example of expressionist art, and it features a person standing on a pier with their face twisted in a scream. I always thought the term "expressionism" referred to the painting being very expressive, but I later found out that it was about how the landscape around the subject in the painting was also twisting to reflect his anguish, and this anguish was personal to him only, as evidenced by the other figures in the background walking on completely oblivious to the subject's twisted reality. Similarly in the Tragedy of Macbeth, The visuals of the film are designed to reflect the inner state of Macbeth's mind as he slowly succumbs to paranoia. It made me think back to the previous expressionist films I had watched before, such as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) and Metropolis (1927), and I now view these films with a more profound understanding of how the production design helped convey the characters and story more effectively. I was also amazed by the use of CGI, as it didn't occur to me that the set would be difficult to build, but after learning about the use of CGI in the film, I could definitely see how it added a mystical quality to otherwise quite mundane architecture.
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