It’s an amazing thing to watch Joel Coen’s The Tragedy of Macbeth, currently playing on Apple TV+, after seeing a lot of other new American movies recently. The film’s beauty, ambition, and impact are so much greater than what even gets attempted these days, it’s discombobulating — like going up a mountain too fast and feeling faint from the sudden change in altitude.

I’ve read a couple of warnings from critics saying it’s better to know William Shakespeare’s play well before seeing this film — don’t listen to those low-level demons! Just watch the film with your eyes and ears open. Director Joel Coen, working for the first time without his brother Ethan, isn’t interested in making a grandly opaque and inscrutable film. There’s tremendous beauty in clarity, and Macbeth can’t get any clearer than it is here.

Just to give you an example of the boldness and certainty of the approach: there are two words that appear, written out in big, white capital letters on black. The first, appearing immediately as the film begins, is “WHEN,” and the second, coming much later, as all the climactic consequences of dark deeds are converging, is “TOMORROW.”