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Macbeth Month: 1957 -Throne of Blood, the Kurosawa One


  “I am in blood
        Stepped in so far that, should I wade no more,
        Returning were as tedious as go o’er.”
                                                            -Act III, scene iv, 136-138

It may be too early to lay the cards out on the table, but I’m going to do it anyway: Throne of Blood is the best Macbeth adaptation. I know it’s Kurosawa, which makes it a pretty cliché choice for a film buff, but you know, Kurosawa’s got his reputation for a reason and Throne of Blood is just so strong a translation that proves tenfold the universality of Shakespeare. It is the best directed version of Macbeth and I’d venture to argue one of the best performed, despite it’s lack of household name thespians. It does though owe something to the previous version discussed, as Kurosawa had wanted to do a Macbeth adaptation around the time of Rashomon, but decided to put it off several years due to the proximity of Welles’ film. He probably respected the guy too much to show him up that soon.
That’s probably unfair, but I do think as far as doing something different with the material of the play, Kurosawa does outshine Welles in both style and initiative. Feudal Japan is a pretty good analogue for feudal Scotland, similar in a lot of ways, but also very different. The one and only Toshiro Mifune is of course the Macbeth of the piece, Washizu, a samurai general in the army of Lord Tsuzuki. There are no witches here but rather a mysterious white spirit with a spinning wheel, a character out of Japanese folklore who foretells the critical prophecy. It is not a dagger but a spear with which Washizu kills his lord, and Washizu himself is killed by his own archers turning on him rather than Takashi Shimura’s much reduced Macduff approximation. It changes the message of the play slightly to factor in more the people Macbeth rules over as instruments in his fate. A greater emphasis is also placed on the importance of an heir –Washizu’s Lady Asaji (Isuzu Yamada) even gives birth to a stillborn child to cement the fleeting power of Washizu’s dynasty. Her own death is never brought up, she is left simply in the throes of madness.
But she arguably plays a stronger role here in manipulating her husband. It’s not very subtle how quick she is to pressure him to act on the prediction, and yet Yamada’s performance is carefully restrained. She exudes a great quiet influence over Washizu, wrapping him around her finger as befits the best Lady Macbeths. And Kurosawa and Mifune do an excellent job translating the evolution of Washizu’s ambition for power, where he isn’t terribly interested to start –needs that coaxing from his wife- to having fully embraced that newfound authority out of fear and greed, and is desperate to hold onto it until the last. In tandem with this, Mifune’s make-up, which like for everyone in the film is based on the expressive conventions of Noh theatre, gets gradually more extreme, pronounced and ugly as the film goes on, an extraordinary reflection of his darkening soul.
Throne of Blood is a big film, shot on the slopes of Mount Fuji and with tons of extras. It’s a grim, barren environment that feels highly isolated from the rest of the world. Who would even want to lord over it, you might ask. The smoke and ever-present fog, a Kurosawa staple, lends considerable mood, as does the spooky Noh music and deep bass choirs of dread that open and close the film -seeming to emanate from nature itself. Kurosawa doesn’t use any of Shakespeare’s actual language obviously, but he does translate the ethos of the play extraordinarily well, and the sense of the dreary inevitable better than anyone. He approaches this movie with the supernatural in mind first -the spiritual element as a driving force and overhanging influence. His prophecy scene is one of the most compelling in the film, that pale whiteness encompassing the spirit giving off a more ancient supernatural presence than is usually felt with the witches of the play otherwise. And then there’s that famous shot of the treetops blowing in the wind partially concealed by the fog. We know what it really is, but it is foreboding nonetheless, and carries with it the certainty of defeat. All of these, Kurosawa illustrates with the utmost command of his craft, and it’s no wonder Throne of Blood was a direct inspiration for the next Macbeth adaptation we’ll be discussing.

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