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Throne of Blood
The question that I’ve always had about Shakespeare’s MacBeth is whether or not the ambitious man, so devoted to his king in battle, would ever have had the notion of murdering the king and stealing the throne if the evil witches and his wife hadn’t put the idea in his head in the first place. Certainly he dreamed of being king, but what reasonable nobleman wouldn’t? But before the witches came and promised him that he would become Scotland’s ruler, would he have ever thought of shedding innocent blood to assume the throne? The most interesting aspect of Akira Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood is that he seems to think that the answer to this question is no. His Washizu, a medieval, Japanese MacBeth (played by Toshirô Mifune), seems shocked when the evil spirit comes to him and tells him that he will be king, and he is horrified at his wife’s notion that he must kill the king in order to fulfill the prophecy. He only surrenders to violence and betrayal when his wife convinces him that if he does not, the king will surely find out about the prophecy and have him killed. Thus, Washizu murders the king and assumes the throne more out of survival than a lust for power. The thirst for power and ambition might destroy him later, but throughout Kurosawa’s interpretation of Shakespeare’s play, we cannot help but sympathize with Washizu’s fear more than we hate his ambition. It’s certainly an intriguing approach—worthy of comparison to, say, Roman Polanski’s MacBeth, who is so bitter and cynical throughout that he probably would have killed the king without any supernatural promise of power. But then, Kurosawa has never been interested in creating black and white characters. His films feature protagonists of great moral and emotional complexity, whose decisions and nature must be weighed in order to determine if they are good or evil (see his breakthrough film, Rashomon, as a supreme example of his approach to human nature). The great director’s own obsessions about the state of humanity make him perfect for an adaptation of Shakespeare, whose tragedies never exempted their heroes of unforgiven flaws either. Kurosawa makes the most of his relocation of Shakespeare’s play, from medieval Scotland to medieval Japan—from the feudal system to the samurai reign. Some have called his relocation a brilliant and unexpected update, but I wouldn’t go that far. I’ve studied Shakespeare enough to know that his words and stories are timeless, able to be translated into any time and any era. Thoughts of a possible Hamlet 4099 A.D. come to mind, featuring laser battles, spaceships, and an invasion of an alien kingdom led by the Klingon-esque Fortinbras. The genius of Shakespeare is that such an update could reasonably work. Kurosawa realized this too, and he keeps Throne of Blood surprisingly faithful to the text. He does not retain the Bard’s lyrical language, but he creates some visual lyrics of his own, effectively using scenery and mood to convey Shakespeare’s dark story about murder, war, betrayal, and, eventually, revenge. This is probably his most appealing film visually; his use of location and weather certainly maintain the mood in a haunting, poetic sense in the same way that Shakespeare’s verbal poetry does. The fog rests heavily on the landscape, and Kurosawa employs extreme shots of Washizu riding straight into it, a small speck on the screen being consumed by the engulfing weather. The forest, in which the evil spirit dwells (replacing the three witches), is thick and shady, similar to the dense forest of Rashomon, where unspeakable crimes took place. But there is a notable difference between the woods of the two films: In Rashomon, sunlight always tried to pierce into the darkness, representing goodness that was trying to emerge. In Throne of Blood, the dark forest is made darker by rain, moss, fog, and thunder. So dark are these times that even the little good that exists is smothered into silence. Kurosawa also effectively uses the supernatural elements of Shakespeare’s story to create scenes of true terror. His main approach is to keep the characters in the film moving quickly, always pacing or working with their hands, and then contrasting these characters with a quiet stillness whenever the supernatural is present. His first encounter with the evil spirit in the woods is one of the most disturbing visualizations of the supernatural that I have ever seen in a film: Washizu stumbles upon the evil spirit sitting in a fragile, almost transparent hut. The camera rests on her as she remains absolutely still and sings a quiet, moaning song. She is certainly a terrifying, otherworldly entity with her white glow and stone face, and it is unnerving to hear her soft voice sing and her face emit no emotion for so long. As I noted above, the most interesting aspect remains Kurosawa’s approach to the protagonist, who is brilliant on the battlefield but not quite as iron-willed when faced with his destiny. His sin is not his ambition, which he initially represses to serve his king, but his obsession with survival, and the influence of his murderous wife. He abandons the samurai’s code of honor because he thinks it is necessary to survive, and only his fear of death convinces him to at last murder the king. I do not think it is an accident that Kurosawa films Washizu’s wife in the same manner that he films the evil spirit—she sits quietly, mumbles her lines, and never emits any discernable emotion. There is a definite link between them, and they are the ones who are truly responsible for Washizu’s downfall. They do not tap into his ambition, but into his fear of death. Kurosawa, then, contrasts code of honor against human instincts in his variation of MacBeth: As a samurai, of course, Washizu has an obligation to follow his chivalric code and serve his king, but as a human, he has a right to defend himself if attacked. By convincing him that his life will be in danger if he doesn’t act on the evil spirit’s prophecy, Washizu’s wife manages to strip away the samurai and reveal the frail human underneath. In Throne of Blood’s final moments, Washizu meets his fate as a coward, realizing too late that the only way that he could have preserved his life would have been to maintain his code of honor as a samurai in the first place. Clearly, Kurosawa has embraced Shakespeare’s themes and combined them with his own obsessions with human nature, and the combination works to create an insightful perspective on an oft-told story. I imagine the Bard nodding in heaven, and wishing that Kurosawa would have also tried his hand at Hamlet, another story that dives into the mystery of human contradiction. Then again, maybe that’s just me. Cast: Questions? Comments? E-mail me: danel_the_tinman@hotmail.com |
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