Line #45 Film/LadyMacbeth


1	[[quoteright:200:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/lady_macbeth_film.png]]
2
3	->''"To the cross, to the prison, to the grave, to the sky."''
4	-->-- '''Katherine'''
5
6	''Lady Macbeth'' (2017) is a British drama film directed by William Oldroyd and written by Alice Birch, based on the novella ''Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District'' by Nikolai Leskov.
7
8	1865, rural England. The young and beautiful Katherine is married off to the much older and bitter Alexander Lester, at the behest of his brutal and domineering father. From the very beginning, her marriage is loveless and devoid of any physical intimacy, as her new husband seems to dislike her just as much as she dislikes him. She feels bored and caged in the drafty Lester manor, especially as she is forbidden from indulging in her favorite pastime, the outdoors. But once her husband and father-in-law go away on business, leaving her on her own for an extended period of time, she begins to explore the surrounding countryside and gradually begins to take other liberties as well...
9
10	The film stars Creator/FlorencePugh as Katherine Lester, Creator/CosmoJarvis as Sebastian, Paul Hilton as Alexander Lester, Creator/NaomiAckie as Anna and Creator/ChristopherFairbank as Boris Lester.
11	----
12	!!''Lady Macbeth'' provides examples of the following tropes:
13
14	* AnyoneCanDie: From AssholeVictims to more surprising choices.
15	* {{Arcadia}}: The beautiful English landscape, with the wide fields and moors is set in sharp contrast with the suffocating stillness of the Lester house. Roaming outdoors is Katherine's favorite pastime, and the imagery used is strongly associated with freedom.
16	* ArrangedMarriage: Between Alexander and Katherine. It doesn't end well.
17	* AssholeVictim: Given what pricks they were, one can sympathize with Katherine and even cheer her on when she kills her father-in-law and husband.
18	* BabyFactory: Katherine's father-in-law expects this of her and blames her for the fact that she isn't pregnant. Never mind that her husband refuses to have sex with her.
19	* BathtubScene: Katherine bathes in a tub at one point, with her breast shown [[{{Sideboob}} on the side]].
20	* BitchSlap: Katherine receives these, whether it's from her husband or other men.
21	* CoitusUninterruptus: Katherine taunts her husband when he demands that she end her affair by bringing Sebastian out of the closet and proceeding to initiate sex right in front of him.
22	* DarkActionGirl: Katherine. [[spoiler: She ends up poisoning her father-in-law, bludgeoning her husband to death and smothering her ward with a pillow.]]
23	* DeathByAdaptation: [[spoiler:Sebastian’s counterpart in the original novel survives.]]
24	* DeathOfAChild: Katherine [[spoiler: kills her husband's horse and later his ward Teddy]].
25	* {{Determinator}}: Katherine [[spoiler: will be together with Sebastian, no matter who she has to fight or murder]]. Ironically, it's this determination and the ensuing actions that [[spoiler: gradually alienate Sebastian from her, until he breaks down and betrays her]].
26	* DeliberateValuesDissonance:
27	** Katherine clearly knows that their racial and social differences are why SHE will be believed rather than Sebastian (a poor white man) and Alice (who's black) when she blames everything on them.
28	** More subtly, it's probably also why Alexander couldn't marry Teddy's mother and only provides for him from afar, since she was black.
29	* DissonantSerenity: Katherine manages to remain calm in the most unsettling of situations. Including when [[spoiler: her lover bursts in the living room and confesses to everything he knows about Katherine's deeds in front of a doctor and a policeman]].
30	* DomesticAbuse: Of the emotional/verbal variety. Alexander doesn't hit Katherine, but he treats her horribly otherwise.
31	* DownerEnding: [[spoiler: Katherine's father-in-law, husband and ward are dead by her hand, her maid and her lover are falsely accused of her deeds and will most likely hang. Katherine sends her servants away and remains alone with her unborn child.]]
32	* DumbStruck: Anna, [[spoiler: after Old Mr. Lester's death]]
33	* ElectiveMute: Anna, as a result of [[spoiler: witnessing Katherine's murder of Mr. Lester Senior]].
34	* EvilPatriarch: The controlling, domineering and sadistic elder Mr. Lester is this to both his son and his daughter-in-law. [[spoiler: The viewers might be hard-pressed to feel sorry for him when Katherine poisons him.]]
35	* HandOnWomb: [[spoiler: Katherine is never stated outright to be pregnant in the last act, but her pregnancy is telegraphed to the audience this way (as well as with some shots with a small bump visible through her nightgown)]].
36	* HeelRealization: Sebastian has this when he admits to Katherine that he was seriously contemplating killing Teddy so that he and Katherine could be together, and gets hit with it hard after the two of them [[spoiler: DO kill the little boy]].
37	* {{Jerkass}}: Old Mr. Lester is a sadistic, sexist, brutal and controlling man. His son and his daughter-in-law hate him.
38	* KarmaHoudini: [[spoiler: Katherine kills three people (including an innocent child) and a horse. Not only does she avoids punishment, two more people might get executed due to being accused of her deeds (only one was involved).]]
39	* LadyDrunk: Tormented by the restrictions imposed upon her by her husband and father-in-law, Katherine turns to alcohol.
40	* LadyMacbeth: Unusually, she is this to her lover rather than her husband.
41	* LawOfInverseFertility: [[spoiler: A catalyst for Katherine's murder of Teddy. After discovering that she is unexpectedly pregnant with Sebastian's child, she tries to tell him, but he's angry at being forced to sleep in the stable because of Teddy's presence and sends her away. This begins a series of events which ends up with Katherine smothering Teddy with a [[VorpalPillow pillow]].]]
42	* MakeItLookLikeAnAccident: Katherine tries to invoke some version of this with her murders--no one questions her about her father-in-law's death, her husband is assumed to have met with foul play during his travels home, and she claims that [[spoiler: Teddy's death was due to hypothermia, even as the coroner and constable are [[TheCoronerDothProtestTooMuch saying there are clear signs of the child having been suffocated]]]].
43	* MurderTheHypotenuse: [[spoiler: Katherine ends up murdering her own husband to cover her affair with Sebastian]].
44	* MsFanservice: Katherine is shown naked from [[ToplessnessFromTheBack the back]] and [[{{Sideboob}} side]] multiple times along with from the front briefly, while in some cases having sex with Sebastian.
45	* NeverFoundTheBody: Katherine and Sebastian dispose of Alexander and his horse's body in the woods, hoping that no one will realize that he made it home and assume that he met with foul play along the way.
46	* ThePeepingTom: At one point Anna spies on Katherine having sex with Sebastian in her room by peering through the keyhole.
47	* PetTheDog: In spite of her initial reticence, Katherine bonds with Teddy. [[spoiler: It doesn't stop her from smothering him to death.]]
48	* PoliticallyCorrectHistory: The film generally doesn't gloss over classism and racism of the time period. In the case of Teddy however, no one reacts at all to the fact that his mother was black. Though it's not impossible, the reaction would far more likely be negative, with his existence considered a scandal that had to be hushed up, rather than having his white father Alexander's family openly care for him. That said it is possible there was much more of an uproar to the father doing so, it’s just with how isolated Katherine was she never heard of it.
49	* RealityHasNoSoundtrack: Outside of two scenes, there isn't any non-diegetic soundtrack.
50	* TheScapegoat: [[spoiler: Sebastian and Anna become this for Katherine's murders, and are carted off to be hanged while she gets off scot-free]].
51	* SexlessMarriage: Alexander never consummates his marriage with Katherine; instead, he makes her strip naked and face the wall while he masturbates. Katherine comes to believe that he's impotent, but then it turns out [[spoiler: he fathered an illegitimate child]], and Sebastian suggests that he may have simply not been interested in ''her''.
52	* {{Sideboob}}: Katherine is shown naked from the side more than once, which shows her breasts this way.
53	* ShaggyDogStory: Everything Katherine does is so that she and Sebastian can be together, but when their actions are discovered, she sends him to the hangman without a second thought, making her behavior truly pointless.
54	* SilkHidingSteel: Katherine appears to be a ProperLady, poised and graceful. But she stubbornly resists the attempts of her husband and father-in-law to confine and control her. And she is capable of much darker things than they suspect...
55	* SparedByAdaptation: [[spoiler: Katherine commits suicide in the original novel.]]
56	* StarCrossedLovers: Katherine and Sebastian have numerous obstacles standing in the way of their happiness. [[spoiler: Katherine eliminates all of them, but her string of murders inadvertently drives Sebastian away.]]
57	* TheStoolPigeon: [[spoiler: Sebastian reveals everything about the murder of Teddy and the Lesters.]]
58	* SympatheticMurderer: [[spoiler:Katherine]], at least in regards to her [[spoiler:father-in-law and husband]]. The sympathy soon fades when she [[spoiler:kills Teddy however.]]
59	* ToplessnessFromTheBack: Katherine is shown multiple times fully nude from behind, focusing on her backside.
60	* UnwantedSpouse: Katherine and Alexander are this for each other. Their marriage was arranged by Alexander's father, who wanted an heir to the Lester name. Katherine tried to bond with her new husband, but her attempt is immediately cut short by Alexander's coldness and verbal aggression. It's implied that he only saw her as just another thing his father had imposed on him.
61	* UptownGirl: Katherine is this to Sebastian.
62	* VillainProtagonist: Katherine. Initially, her [[spoiler: murder of her father-in-law and husband seem almost sympathetic, as they were vile and abusive.]] But then she [[spoiler: murders an innocent child and unjustly throws the blame on her lover and maid]]...
63	* VorpalPillow: [[spoiler: how Katherine gets rid of Teddy]].
64	* WickedStepmother: [[spoiler: Katherine fills in this role for poor Teddy. Although she is hinted to actually be a little fond of him, his presence stands in the way of her being with Sebastian.]]
65	* WouldHurtAChild: [[spoiler: Katherine, who smothers Teddy with Sebastian.]]
66	* WouldntHurtAChild: [[spoiler:Sebastian, at first anyway, refuses to kill Teddy, a little boy. Later though he's convinced to help Katherine do so.]]
67	* {{Yandere}}: Katherine eventually becomes this, with Sebastian as her object of affection. [[spoiler: downplayed in that she is willing to make him TheScapegoat for the murders to absolve herself of legal consequences]].

Context Film / LadyMacbeth