{"id":47211,"date":"2022-01-14T17:01:57","date_gmt":"2022-01-14T17:01:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/us\/?post_type=articles&p=47211"},"modified":"2022-01-14T17:06:39","modified_gmt":"2022-01-14T17:06:39","slug":"essential-shakespeare-films-macbeth","status":"publish","type":"articles","link":"https:\/\/graziamagazine.com\/us\/articles\/essential-shakespeare-films-macbeth\/","title":{"rendered":"14 Essential Shakespeare Films To Watch In 2022"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Denzel Washington in Joel Cohen’s The Tragedy of Macbeth<\/i> (Photo: courtesy of AppleTV+)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

By the pricking of my thumbs, Joel Cohen\u2019s The Tragedy of Macbeth<\/em> this way comes! The acclaimed director\u2019s stunning black and white adaptation of \u201cthe Scottish play\u201d arrives on AppleTV+ today with knockout performances by Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand<\/a> as the doomed lord and his scheming wife, and an impressionistic atmosphere, like a half-remembered dream.<\/p>\n

Of course, this impressive film is just the latest in a long history of film versions of Shakespeare\u2019s plays stretching all the way back to the dawn of movie making. The Bard is, after all, perennial. We never seem to tire of either the straight-forward adaptations or the looser takes inspired by his plays. But Shakespeare seems to be more present in the cultural imagination than usual recently. On a recent episode<\/a> of The Ringer<\/em>\u2019s \u201cPrestige TV Podcast,\u201d Sean Fennessey suggested that might have something to do with the pandemic and all the sort of general sense in the popular imagination that Shakespeare wrote some of his most enduring work as the bubonic plague swept through England in the early 1600s.<\/p>\n

Whatever the cause of Shakespeare\u2019s latest moment<\/em>, it\u2019s undeniable that many of the best, most talked-about pop culture of the past year owes something to his plays. These six in particular seem especially relevant:<\/p>\n