Kurosawa Akira’s version of Macbeth, released in the West as Throne of Blood
(it’s not a literal translation), has become one of the most enduring
adaptations of any of Shakespeare’s plays. It’s a demonstration of how a
filmmaker can represent the major thematic elements of a text from one
language and translate them not only to a second language, but also to a
second, medium, from drama to film. Some may scoff at seeing this as
“Shakespearean,” but this is one the essential aspects of Shakespeare’s
art: his stories all have their source material, and he transformed them
into some of the greatest poetry of his language. (You hear anyone
going around these days saying, oh, man that dude ruined Holinshed’s Chronicles? Not now, not then.)
Kurosawa
takes the medieval Scottish play and places it in roughly a similar
period, of feudal Japan, with rival warlords fighting ceaselessly. The
question of nationhood is much less significant in the film than in
Shakespeare. (For Shakespeare, nationality was a crucial component,
since his new boss was the James VI King of Scotland, now James I King
of England. There was likely an understood lineage between James and
Banquo, whom the three witches told would beget kings though never be
one himself.)
What likely drew Kurosawa to the play was the question of man's control
over fate: how much of Macbeth's fate is out of his hands?
Shakespeare was "discovered" in Japan during the era of the Meiji
Restoration (1862-1912), a period of openness between the island nation
and the West. The notions of Individualism, which had become more or
less taken for granted since the Renaissance, where comparatively new to
Japan, and since Shakespeare was writing in the midst of that era, and
whose plays were often set in times where the individual struggled in
relation to fate (or to the collective), the tales told held
fascination. The traditional Noh theater used many different narrative
forms, but the supernatural was often a theme: one genre is known as
"demon play." Kurosawa used Japanese theatrical conventions as a
central element in Throne of Blood.
The three central actors -- Chieko Naniwa as the "forest spirit"
(Kurosawa's version of the "weird sisters"), Isuzu Yamada as Lady Asaji Washizu, and the legendary Toshiru Mifune as Lord Washizu -- were given Noh masks to study as part of their acting process.
It
was during the Meiji era that cinema was introduced to Japan (as it was
to much of the planet, between 1895 and 1900). Japanese theatrical
conventions again determined how the cinema was to be received and
presented. (In its earliest days, the projection of a film itself was
performance; historian Donald Ritchie writes of a screening where the
projector was presented one side of the stage, and watching the
projectionist was really the object of attention.) The tradition of
the benshi ---
men who explained the action of early silent films -- was borrowed from
theater, especially puppet theater. In many respects Japanese cinema
always retained an aspect of self-awareness; the audience was not
usually "lulled" into the drama of the film to forget that it was just
that, only a film (unlike in Classical Hollywood cinema, which almost
always sought to "hide" its processes).
Kurosawa's film is a fascinating mixture of Japanense theater and Western-style film-making. I just want to make a few short observations, mainly using some images from the film.
On the subject of Washizu's control over his fate, I am inclined to believe, as many scholars have said, that he is even less in control than the Thane of Cawdor. The film begins with a misty scene of ruin and death, with a chorus telling us that a mighty fortress once stood there, that a great warrior, ruined by ambition, met his destruction because of it. We're about to see that story unfold: the mist begins to move, in patterns that vaguely resemble horses, and suddenly we see Cobweb Castle (translated by most video versions of the film as "Forest Castle"); a soldier rides toward it to tell the Lord Tsuzuki news of the battle. (The opening events resemble Duncan's first scene in Macbeth: the witches are not needed, since the chorus has already filled us in.) When we meet our hero, and his friend, Lord Miki, they are riding hard after their successes, struggling in the rain ("so fair and foul a day," indeed!) to get through the natural labyrinth of the forest that surrounds his Lordship's castle. They hear a haunting, echoing laughter, then declare that an evil spirit is keeping them from finding their way. They finally stumble upon said evil spirit; the shot resembles a theater setting:
The spirit drones on about the doomed nature of humanity, suggesting perhaps she's listened to a lot of Smiths albums (speaking of western influence), spinning at her wheel, reading the future of the brave warriors. Note also, as Jack Jorgens did in one of the first books on Shakespeare films (which in one edition featured a picture of Mifune-as-Washizu on the cover), that the loom resembles the reels of a film projector:
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| Cinema as Fate: The spinning wheels |
Their futures told, the spirit vanished, the two men ride through the mist and ride through the mist and ride some more through the mist and then ride some more, and when they finally see the castle, they stop to rest. I really like this shot of the two of them, in repose, their future laid before them, visible in the form of the castle. They have joked about the prophecy, but both warriors wonder if there is some truth in them. (Dreams are a reflection of our desires, Washizu, pre-Freudean, says.)
Something about the composition of the shot is so powerful: the two friends, laughing uneasily, amid the gray, death-marked dirt and the fog, not quite fully lifted, showing us how close their doom lies.
Some more theater: Asaji is very much a figure out of Noh traditions, as this shot demonstrates:
Yamada's performance is stoic, chilling; she rules her roost, carefully manipulating her husband into murder. Mifune's performance runs his classic, intense range: he's angry, guilty, helpless.
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| Noh, or "NO!!!" ? |
She moves heel to toe, her dress almost squeaking as she prepares to get the wine to drug his Lordship's guards, and as she does so, she fades into the darkness: it's a great fifteen seconds of movement.
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| fade into darkness... |
Notice also the way that Washizu is "trapped" by the framing, by the architecture. While his lordship stays in their quarters upon visiting Wahizu's castle, husband and wife stay in a room where one of the traitors killed himself, leaving blood on the wall that would not come off. (Foreshadowing, obviously, but that's the point: we the audience know what's coming.) Here is a shot of the wall as Washizu's servants enter the room to prepare it.
and now, here is Washizu, trapped in the room by the screen, by the drama, by his fate.
The most obvious example, an image often used in the books, is of Washizu's final moments, as the forest has moved toward his castle, and his own men shoot arrows at him and kill him.
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| talk about lines of fate |
Throughout the film, the wildness and mystery -- or should I say mist-ery -- of the forest is contrasted with the straight lines of the castle, the men's uniforms, and their weapons. Washizu is ultimately trapped by both.
Kurosawa's composition owes much to theater, but his camera work is also very fluid, especially in the scenes where men race through the forest on horseback. His use of hard-wipes to change scenes may seem a bit old-fashioned, but it is keeping within a tradition of the use of screens in Japanese theater to change time and space. But then, perhaps one of the oddest possible mixes of west and east comes in this shot:
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