by Gus Sanchez

Created on: February 01, 2007   Last Updated: May 09, 2007

Shakespeare's Macbeth reimagined by Akira Kurosawa in feudal Japan. In a long line of samurai epics directed by perhaps the most influential director ever, Throne of Blood is easily Kurosawa's best of the genre, and that's saying a lot considering how monumentally influential Seven Samurai, The Hidden Fortress and Yojimbo are (which have been remade as, respectively, The Magnificent Seven, Star Wars and A Fistful of Dollars, not mention countless other films). Shakespeare's plays have always retained a sense of malleability, easily allowing translation and adaptation towards differing historical eras, and Throne of Blood succeeds as both a unique intepretation of Macbeth and an insightful look into the hierarchy of feudal Japan, when samurais ruled the land. Kurosawa's highly impressive directing lends an eerie sense to the proceedings; his innovative use of shadows, fog, wind and rain create a palpatable sense of doom and foreboding that parallels and accentuates the greed and guilt that pervades the psyche of the samurai warlord Washizu, played memorably by Toshiro Mifune. Washizu and his colleague in arms Miki (Minoru Chiaki) encounter a female spirit while lost in the forest, on their way to their feudal home, the Spider's Web Castle. The spirit, reminiscent of the three witches that foretell Macbeth's doom, predicts predicts Washizu's ascendancy to the throne, which Washizu at first refuses to believe, but having been shaken to his soul by the spirit's prophecy, he decides the prophecy must come true. With the help of his scheming wife Asaji, Washizu's ascendancy is swift, having murdered the current warlord and assumed complete power. But, needless to say, his guilt and paranoia overcome the best of him, and signal his eventual downfall. Mifune handles his role with great physicality and muscle, creating indelible images of both strength and weakness. Mifune's blistering intensity burns through the screen. Memorable as Asaji, the plotting wife, is Isuzu Yamada, decked in ghostly-white makeup and traditional garb, eeriely dispensing murderous advise to her warlord husband with little or no emotion. Asaji is clearly the corrupt alter ego of the prideful, honorable Washizu, who is to blame for his (and their) downfall. A terrific ending, complete with a terrific flurry of arrows, demonstrates Mifune's gift for physical acting. Kurosawa's skillful directing places his actors and his story in a confining world, where the protagonists' greed and ambition spell a psychological prison from which there is only one tragic escape. It's evident from Throne of Blood, and so many other of his films, that Akira Kurosawa is perhaps the most imfluential director of all time.

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