Tomor­row creeps in its pet­ty pace in the first image from Joel Coen’s Macbeth

As pan­dem­ic con­di­tions start to loosen, everyone’s cat­a­logu­ing their own lit­tle signs that ​“nature is return­ing,” and there’s no sur­er omen that nor­mal­cy has resumed for film obses­sives than the revival of a prop­er fes­ti­val sea­son. Toron­to seems to be full steam ahead, and now the New York Film Fes­ti­val has sig­naled their con­fi­dence by select­ing an open­ing night title with fit­ting A‑list names attached.

The Tragedy of Mac­beth, Joel Coen​’s solo-direct­ed take on the immor­tal Shake­speare­an tragedy, will kick things off at the 59^th NYFF. Today also brings a first look at the film in the image below, a more expres­sive chiaroscuro depic­tion of a lover’s embrace than one might antic­i­pate from pro­mo­tion­al mate­r­i­al for a Bard adaptation.

Though Coen loy­al­ists should know bet­ter than to expect the expect­ed, the broth­ers’ irrev­er­ent takes on his­to­ry (as seen in Hail Cae­sar and The Hud­suck­er Proxy, to name only a cou­ple) fore­telling a revi­sion­ist inter­pre­ta­tion of this oft-mount­ed text. For starters, Den­zel Wash­ing­ton will por­tray the famed Scot, mak­ing him the first Black man to play Mac­beth in a fea­ture film, with the great Frances McDor­mand por­tray­ing his schem­ing wife.

The rest of the cast will be filled out by Corey Hawkins (as the sus­pi­cious Mac­duff), Bren­dan Glee­son (as the aging king Dun­can), and the Queen’s Gam­bit break­out Moses Ingram (as Lady Mac­duff). To make mat­ters even more intrigu­ing, Coen eschewed loca­tion shoot­ing on the rolling Scot­tish hills and sit­u­at­ed the entire pro­duc­tion in sound­stage sets to cre­ate a look ​“unteth­ered from reality.”

Though dis­trib­u­tors Apple and A24 have yet to set a release date either in the States or abroad, this nonethe­less presents an encour­ag­ing por­tent for this year’s NYFF, primed after a year spent online to return in grander fash­ion than ever. As for their Clos­ing Night and Cen­ter­piece picks — would it be too much to hope for a gan­der at the new Paul Thomas Ander­son?

The 59^th annu­al New York Film Fes­ti­val will begin on 24 Sep­tem­ber and con­clude on 10 October.