Throne of Blood (1957)

"Without ambition, a man is not a man."

I've been wanting to do a Kurosawa for ages. The only reason I haven't done one yet is because the DVDs are at a hard-to-get-at part of the cupboard. I'm going to make a concerted effort to start watching some of those back-of-the cupboard DVDs in the next few weeks, instead of just plonking them straight from the front pile. Honestly, the things I do for you, my readers…

This is a fairly straight remake of Macbeth with the obvious cultural adjustments, although of course we should remember that a film is a fully completed work, whereas a play script is just a script, so it's not a like-for-like comparison. This would have been just as extraordinarily, and would have had Akira Kurosawa's imprint stamped all over it, even if it had been a straight version of Shakespeare's script. But it isn't. It's very different. The characters are absolutely the same psychologically, but the means by which this is expressed is fascinatingly different.

Shakespeare's work is fundamentally about language, about expressing philosophicasl musings, psychological depths, humour and pretty much the whole world through the medium of words. What's fascinating about what Kurosawa has done here is that we have the opposite situation entirely; this film is to a large extent about the absence of language. There are many, many scenes which consist of long silences, characters communicating only (but very effectively) by facial expression. Characters are generally terse and inarticulate, and struggle to communicate with each other. The scene in which Washizu and Miki struggle to speak coherently about the prophecy they have just heard is highly revealing. The film even begins with a garbled series of reports by messengers, which is highly appropriate.

The scene where Miki welcomes Washizu into Cobweb Castle after his murder of Lord Tsuzuki  is fascinating: the two of them walk in silence, with Miki speaking only to briefly say that he will support Washizu because he will be able to defend the castle. It's left ambiguous whether he realises what Washizu has done but is supporting him for pragmatic reasons. The point is what's not said, the absence of language.

The exception to all this, of course, is the highly articulate, scheming Asaji, the only major female character. Making the Lady Macbeth figure the only articulate figure in the entire film (except, perhaps, for several examples of Kurosawa's signature use of peasants as a kind of Greek chorus) makes articulacy appear to be devious and feminine, whilst inarticulacy is made to look weak and masculine.

Asaji induces a sense of paranoia in Washizu, constantly persuading to act by insisting that others are conspiring against him, which is something of a change of emphasis from the source material. This is further entrenched by the many, many instances of bad omens, which intensify the sense of foreboding. There's a constant sense that something is going bto happen and this is deepened, I think, by Kuropsawa's decisions to keep the dramatic events- the battles and murders- firmly off-screen. For Shakespeare, keeping these scenes off-stage was a rather prosaic, practical necessity but for Kurosawea, I think, it's a way of delaying the pay-off until the end.  And Washizu's death scene, with the hail of arrows and some incredible facial acting from the legendary Toshiro Mifune, is the best thing ever.

As we'd expect, everything looks great, with lots of murky fog, a suitably labyrinthine forest and gnarled trees, and Kurasawa's trademark wipes that George Lucas loves so much. I enjoyed that a lot.