The Scottish Play (2022) Film Review
The Scottish Play is one of those relatively small films you can’t help but feel connected with. It looks very, very good. Its leads are incredibly charismatic, and its main storyline is quite interesting.
The mere existence of it feels courageous in the face of cinema going “too big” and film studios and streaming services dominating the way you experience films. If you wish to take a break from all that, indie cinema should be a way to go. It’s not that they always feel realistic. It’s that they feel very honest, and sometimes we want that. Cozy films, I would call them. And this doesn’t mean they’re lazy products of creativity.
Behind them there’s a drive. Keith Boynton is the mastermind of The Scottish Play. His vision is perfectly carried out by a whole team who understands exactly the kind of film he set out to make. Of course, it could use a few perks and edits, but with a story like this, you can’t help but celebrate freedom in the script and the execution.
It tells the story of an actress who decides to participate in a play in a small New England theater company. From the beginning she connects with the young director who’s somehow intimidated by her presence. They’re adapting a Shakespeare play. The cursed one.
Things take a weird turn, when Shakespeare himself shows up in a garden to talk to Sydney. A ghost or a presence of some kind, he begins interacting with the actress who understands there’s an intention to this: detail changes to the cursed work of Macbeth.
The why, the whos, and the outcomes, I won’t reveal. Needless to say, The Scottish Play is a safe exploration of a situation that goes from the supernatural to the downright romantic without posing any sort of threat to characters or the genre approached by Boynton. This is an innocent film and it must remain like that.
In that safe approach, The Scottish Play lags a bit much in the second act. It becomes repetitive and sequences including the Shakespeare representation, as fun as the actor makes it, are extremely long and ineffective. This is when the movie suffers from its lack of editing. Some viewers will miss the intention of going this way.
Regardless, it’s an enjoyable film. Again, it also looks great. Its ending will satisfy most as it stays on the surefire path to go full circle with the protagonist’s storyline. It stays where it has to be as effective as it can be.
