I recently watched William Oldroyd’s Lady Macbeth, based on Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District by 19th century Russian novelist Nikolai Leskov. The trailer mentioned Alfred Hitchcock, which intrigued me enough to let go of $15 at Village East Cinema. A brief synopsis: Lady Catherine (the main character) is married to a man who does not desire her and is extremely controlling. When he suddenly leaves for mysterious purposes, she falls for and has an affair with the groundskeeper and is finally happy. The rest of the story is about how she gets rid of anyone who tries to stop her from carrying on her affair.
What I felt as soon as I left the movie theater: I really liked it, but was also slightly disturbed by my sympathies toward the main character. I won’t give away any plot spoilers, but will say that a number of characters are killed along the way as the story develops. The audience (at least in my case) is supposed to either empathize with or at least understand the first few deaths. In fact, one can argue that these deaths are even supposed to be liberatory for the main character. However, this gets tricky when the potential victims are innocent and powerless. Questions like ‘do the ends justify the means?’, and ‘would I have made different choices?’ haunted my thoughts as I replayed the scenarios in my head. What was ultimately disturbing was that I maybe would not have made different choices at all.
However, my reaction to the story is socially constructed and time-bound. What I mean is that I live at a time and in a culture that prioritizes romantic love, individuality, and freedom from repressive sexual mores. This informs my reaction to the plot and leads to conflicting questions about what we owe ourselves and what we may owe others/society. I wonder what Leskov’s 19th century novel-reading Russian audience may have reacted. Would they have as easily empathized with Lady Catherine and seen her as a complicated heroine/villain? Or would they have blamed her for expressing her sexuality, and wanting to live a happier life?
What do you think? How does your culture, values and norms inform what you think about art?
(Featured image: book cover for Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District in Russian)
Robert Salerno
September 3, 2017 — 9:13 pm
I like the question you asked about how the audience would have reacted when the story was published. I think about that a lot when it comes to music and movies. When it comes to Horror movies like “The Exorcist”(1973), audiences were genuinely terrified. There were numerous reports of people fainting or walking out of the movie theater. Looking back at the movie now, it does not seem nearly as scary. So I imagine there would have been an intense reaction to the release of Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District.