Lady Macbeth (2016) on Netflix
Northumberland, 1865. Katherine Lester marries Alexander Lester and joins his family's estate, expected to produce an heir. When the men leave, she begins an affair with a workman, Sebastian.
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- Netflix3.9/5
- IMDb6.8/1030,313 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes88%
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Plot summary
In 1865, Katherine marries Alexander Lester and joins his family's rural estate in Northumberland, where his domineering father Boris bought her to produce a legitimate heir. Alexander tells her to stay indoors despite her interests, and refuses to consummate the marriage. She tires of the solitary routine. When Alexander leaves for Amble and Boris travels to London, Katherine walks the estate. In an outbuilding she finds the estate workmen abusing her maid Anna, and having freed her she grows intrigued by the ringleader, Sebastian. The two begin an affair. Anna, who works in the house with a younger maid and a cook, grows concerned by her mistress's behavior.
Cast
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Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Lady Macbeth (2016)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
SPOILER
Alice Birch's screenplay for Lady Macbeth changes the ending of Nikolai Leskov's 1865 novella: on the page Lady Macbeth confesses to stay with her working-class lover and lives on as a convict, while in the film Katherine Lester instead frames her lover Sebastian and her maid Anna and keeps her place in the landed gentry.SPOILER
The two violent acts by Katherine that lead to a death, shooting Alexander's horse and smothering Teddy, each play out in a single continuous wide master shot with a static frame to make them more confronting; cinematographer Ari Wegner said the approach was influenced by Michael Haneke's films.- To mirror Katherine's state of mind, director William Oldroyd and cinematographer Ari Wegner locked the camera into a static frame around her when she felt constrained, and used a handheld, moving frame when she was relaxed.
- Lambton Castle's Lester house interiors were sparsely furnished with walls in cold period colors to reflect the austere Boris Lester; director William Oldroyd said the production design drew on the pared-back interiors and cool daylight of Danish painter Vilhelm Hammershøi, and Lambton Castle has similar daylight, both County Durham and southern Denmark lying close to the 55th parallel north.
- Sound designers Dan Jones and Ben Baird built the film's expressionist soundscape from recordings of people in the house and of nature on the estate, and it plays unnaturally loud in the film.
- Lady Macbeth is generally regarded as the breakthrough role for both Florence Pugh and Naomi Ackie, who played the maid Anna.
