Just watched Akira Kurosawa's Throne of Blood and am quite impressed. It's an adaptation, more or less (one commentary said "transposition," which is probably more accurate) of Shakespeare's Macbeth, one of my favorite Shakespearean plays, set in feudal Japan. Although Shakespeare's dialogue is not preserved at all, it is one of the best film presentations of Macbeth that I have seen.
Macbeth is about evil, and I'm not just talking about the witches. I mean the things one does against better judgment, addictions, temptations, things that make one less real, less oneself, less human. This kind of evil is inherently seductive but ultimately empty, petty and repulsive. Kurosawa captures this theme wonderfully and we watch as the main character, in this case the warrior Taketoki Washizu, seduced by ambition, otherworldly spirits, and his cunning wife, falls from being trusted, honorable warrior to a paranoid tyrant destroyed by madness and the evil he has heeded.
Asaji, the Lady Macbeth character, is truly terrifying. Her highly stylized makeup and costume, her lack of any visible emotion and her exaggerated demure femininity make her poisonous words all the more chilling. While we can at least enjoy the drama of Shakespeare's Lady Macbeth ("Come you spirits,/That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,/And fill me from the crown to the toe, top-full/ of direst cruelty. . ."), Asaji is shockingly pragmatic. When Washizu objects to murdering his lord on the grounds that it is high treason, she calmly responds Washizu's lord secured his own position by murdering his predecessor. The delicate rustle and swish-swish of Asaji's robes becomes absurdly disturbing as she rushes with swift, birdlike steps, blood-stained spear in hand, to frame the guards whom she has drugged.
Without soliloquies, Kurosawa eloquently shows the seduction and destruction of Washizu and the doubts, struggles, rage and despair of a man who betrays and destroys himself for nothing. I definitely want to re-read Macbeth and I'm looking forward to seeing Kurosawa's Ran, an adaptation of King Lear, which is also supposed to be excellent.
Macbeth is about evil, and I'm not just talking about the witches. I mean the things one does against better judgment, addictions, temptations, things that make one less real, less oneself, less human. This kind of evil is inherently seductive but ultimately empty, petty and repulsive. Kurosawa captures this theme wonderfully and we watch as the main character, in this case the warrior Taketoki Washizu, seduced by ambition, otherworldly spirits, and his cunning wife, falls from being trusted, honorable warrior to a paranoid tyrant destroyed by madness and the evil he has heeded.
Asaji, the Lady Macbeth character, is truly terrifying. Her highly stylized makeup and costume, her lack of any visible emotion and her exaggerated demure femininity make her poisonous words all the more chilling. While we can at least enjoy the drama of Shakespeare's Lady Macbeth ("Come you spirits,/That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,/And fill me from the crown to the toe, top-full/ of direst cruelty. . ."), Asaji is shockingly pragmatic. When Washizu objects to murdering his lord on the grounds that it is high treason, she calmly responds Washizu's lord secured his own position by murdering his predecessor. The delicate rustle and swish-swish of Asaji's robes becomes absurdly disturbing as she rushes with swift, birdlike steps, blood-stained spear in hand, to frame the guards whom she has drugged.
Without soliloquies, Kurosawa eloquently shows the seduction and destruction of Washizu and the doubts, struggles, rage and despair of a man who betrays and destroys himself for nothing. I definitely want to re-read Macbeth and I'm looking forward to seeing Kurosawa's Ran, an adaptation of King Lear, which is also supposed to be excellent.
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