Throne of Blood-DVD
June 12, 2003
Adapting Shakespeare to the big screen always brings out the skeptics who say, “leave it to the theater” or “it’s been done” or “how can you possibly create intriguing cinema without the stodginess of its theatricality?” Yet for all of the whining and second-guessing he is probably the single most adapted-to-film writer in film history. Either directors like the challenge or they find his themes universal, essentially they just think his work was born for the cinema, and when pulled off right, who can blame them?
Of the hundreds of strait adaptations, restaging, and veiled retellings of the Bard’s great plays only a handful can be considered the cinematic equivalent to the writers brilliance. Olivier’s “Hamlet” and before that “Henry V” are the definitive versions of those plays, while Zefferelli’s “Romeo & Juliet” will probably never be equaled. Welles liked Shakespeare, his “Othello” is highly regarded but to find the greatest film ever made out of a Shakespeare play you have to look towards Japan, 1957, when Akira Kurosawa, at the height of his powers, adapted “Macbeth” into a samurai drama called “Throne of Blood”.
Kurosawa took Shakespeare’s tragedy of regicide, betrayal, fate, prophecy, and overbearing conscious and transposed it to 15th century feudal Japan where samurai obeyed their masters to the death, by enemy or by ritualistic suicide. He chose not to quote the original text, they didn’t talk like that in 15th century Japan, and presented only four of the five acts, leaving out major developments and characters (most notably Macduff) but what was left was a landmark, a film that made use of all of Shakespeare’s themes and staged with a mix of traditional Japanese Noh theater and epic scale samurai battles.
All of those skeptics shut up when they saw “Throne of Blood” and now it has finally been released on DVD (by The Criterion Collection, big fans of the masters work) hopefully to a whole new audience who could never really get through the whole of “Macbeth” and who can appreciate a rousing black and white foreign film that is, in all honesty, equal parts western revival and Shakespearian tragedy. A.K. was greatly influenced by the western genre (John Ford was one of his big heroes) while his 1961 masterpiece “Yojimbo” was the birth of the spaghetti western, from which Sergio Leone remade as “A Fistful of Dollars”. What Kurosawa was to a young George Lucas and Steven Spielberg, John Ford and Howard Hawkes was to Kurosawa, inspiration.
“Throne of Blood” stars Toshiro Mifune, Kurosawa’s most frequent leading man, in a brilliantly forceful performance as Washizu Taketori, a decorated samurai who, at the onset of the picture, has just sacked an enemy castle with his buddy Miki (Akira Kubo); they are the Macbeth and Banquo characters. Washizu and Miki receive promotions from the Great Lord for their actions, but on the ride to the ceremony the two get lost in Spiders Web forest, a foreboding place of thick trees, dense fog, and cackling birds. The forest is littered with symbolism for entrapment and confusion and a theme throughout the film will be how Washizu is never really in charge of himself, how he gets lost and second guesses his actions, for surely a samurai should know his way to the Lord’s castle.
Lost in the woods the two men come across an old witch, in one of the films first famous scenes, who foretells their immediate future, how Washizu will become Lord and Miki will be second in command. It’s a chilling sequence (one that leads some to liken the film to Kurosawa attempting a horror picture, theories found on solid ground) as the witch, spotlighted heavily to appear totally white, spells out a future of triumph and doom. “All that awaits men at the end of his travails is the stench of rotting flesh,” the creepy figure tells before disappearing and sending the two samurai to their fates.
This early sequence in the woods is justly famous, not only for the witch, but as a good example of Kurosawa’s editing technique and trademarks. Using a telephoto lens, and multiple cameras, the director liked to film fluid motion between more than one character edited (by himself) into a seemingly matched straight action. For example, when the two are charging on horseback through the forest he shoots them through trees, waist up and cuts between each man every five seconds as they speed along for a sequence of about 40 seconds, a bold amount of screen time for such little action. It’s a highly unusual editing technique (Kurosawa was known to break formal cinematic rules) but can be found in nearly all of his action films, most famously in “Seven Samurai” where he cut seven running men into a blur of singular torso’s and trees.
There are more of his trademarks to be found here, such as 180-degree rotations, and zooming in on a character running towards the camera, but most noticeably is his use of the elements, natural or not to hinge the plot. The trees, fog, wind and pouring rain all help in getting Washizu and Miki lost and sidetracked to the prophet. The fog could symbolize confusion while the rain just makes things a mess, especially when you have to meet your destiny via horseback. Kurosawa loved overstated rain; the climax to “Seven Samurai” is so obviously rain-machine drenched that you half expect Gene Kelly to ride up on horseback, plant a light pole in the mud and belt out “Singin’ in the Rain”.
Following the “Macbeth” storyline, after the promotions a trademark Kurosawa screen wipe (for which admitted worshipper George Lucas lifted plenty for “Star Wars”, which was inspired by A.K.’s “The Hidden Fortress”) advances the time a day later and the Lord is visiting Washizu and his wicked wife Asaji (Isuzu Yamada) at their new castle. Asaji, the Lady Macbeth character, is ruthless; she gets into Washizu’s head and urges him to kill the Lord so he can take over. Her reasoning? That the Lord will eventually kill him first and can’t be trusted, when what she really wants is the power, eventually to rule all of Japan.
Needless to say, Washizu is cowardly when it comes to Lady Asaji and in a masterfully underplayed sequence murders the Lord with his sword, off screen, while the camera stays on Asaji’s mask-like face. This is the first of two major climaxes, after the murder the rest of the film will be about how the prophecy coming true messes with Washizu’s mind and how everybody, including the spirits, turn on him. He may be the new Lord, but everybody knows, even his old friends, he did the deed and the straws and minds of Washizu and Asaji begin to snap leading up to his murder and her insane washing the blood off of her spotless hands.
The climax to “Throne of Blood” is possibly the most famous sequence of any Kurosawa film. As the second prophesy comes true (the attack of the moving trees) Washizu’s men turn on him (in lieu of Macduff beheading Macbeth) and fire what seems like thousands of arrows at him, sticking in the fortress wood and his samurai armor. Finally, after a frantic sequence with Mifune giving his best terrified facial expressions, the arrows do him in, what Japanese film scholar Donald Richie called an “immolation” of arrows by his own men, and he collapses in the ground fog, beneath the troops, perfectly centered mid-screen. Like as the chorus that opens and closes the film sang, “For what once was is now true, murderous ambition will pursue, beyond the grave to give its due,” Washizu was ruined by the ambition of his wife and the lack of will to follow on his inner doubts.
“Throne of Blood” was Kurosawa’s 17th film as director, two years after the monumental success of “Seven Samurai” the studio his contract was with, Toho, gave him a big budget to build the huge fortress, and shoot most exteriors on Mount Fuji, like he would do some 28 years later for “Ran”, his great “King Lear” adaptation. This period (1948-1961) is easily Japan’s golden age of cinema, with Kurosawa at the peak of his artistry, with freedom after the occupation to make films he wanted, the way he wanted, the very definition of the auteur theory. With Yasujiro Ozu at Shochiku and Kenji Mizoguchi at Daiei, Japanese cinema of the ‘50’s was, without exaggeration, one of the great bursts of creativity to come from one country since the Italian Neo-realist’s of the post war ‘40’s.
“Throne of Blood” was made by a man who loved to make movies; he used a stock company of familiar actors, and used the same cinematographer and composer for most of his work during this period of his career. He relished in literary adaptations, the same year he made “Throne of Blood” he staged Maxim Gorky’s junkyard parable “The Lower Depths” quite simply because he adored the Russian playwrights and he had the power to film anything.
There are a lot of “greatest’s” that can be thrown around when talking about Kurosawa; greatest director of all time, with Mifune the single greatest director/actor combo of all time, “Throne of Blood” the greatest Shakespeare adaptation of all time. And it’s all true, but with all the hyperbole aside one just has to look at his output to see how special he was. In the beginning there was Griffith, and later there was Welles and Wilder, Fellini, Bergman and Bunuel, but then there was The Emperor, Kurosawa, towering over film history with a pure cinematic vision, and a cannon of masterworks unlike any other.
The Criterion Collection has released “Throne of Blood” on DVD with an informative commentary track by Japanese film scholar Michael Jeck.
by Adam Suraf