Throne of Blood
Akira Kurosawa was a master filmmaker. Of that, there is no dispute. It bears mentioning, for me, only because the more films of his I see, the more enraptured I get in the way he melded Western stories with Japanese culture. He made samurai epics in “Seven Samurai” and “The Hidden Fortress” that would give way to a number of American action films, while “Yojimbo” and “Sanjuro” not only inspired Sergio Leone’s “The Man With No Name,” but fit soundly in the tradition of western movies, even without that later trilogy it was the structure for. He is, quite honestly, the best place to start in foreign cinema for American audiences, and the deeper you get into his filmography, the richer it becomes for the viewer.
His 1957 film, “Throne of Blood,” had me thinking of his 1985 masterpiece, “Ran.” Part of that is because both films are adaptations of Shakespeare from Kurosawa. In “Ran,” he was adapting King Lear, while here, he is bringing his own spin to MacBeth. Both films are about betrayal and a lust for power that gives way to chaos in feudal Japan, but while “Ran” centers on the war that unfolds with madness, “Throne of Blood” goes, full-throated, into the psychology of the betrayal, with a supernatural element that makes the film feel like a horror film. That alone may make it one of my very favorite Kurosawa films.
The film begins with haunted voices singing about Spider’s Web Castle, which has long since fallen into ruin, and the lands surrounding it, before taking us in the middle of a siege against the current Great Lord controlling the region. Two of the Lord’s top lieutenants are Washizu (Toshirô Mifune) and Miki (Akira Kubo), and after they fight off troops mounting an assault at their respective outposts, they find themselves in the forest on the way to the Castle. As they travel, they come across a strange, ethereal figure which offers them a prophecy as to their fates. Washizu, they say, will be in charge of the Northern defenses, while Miki will be at the next fortress, although fate will lead to Washizu taking charge of the Castle, while Miki’s son will succeed him. The first part of the prophecy happens as was predicted, but Washizu’s wife, Lady Asaji (Isuzu Yamada), will not leave anything to chance in making sure her husband sits as ruler of Spider’s Web Castle, but at what cost will that happen?
This may be one of my very favorite Kurosawa films, and it’s because of the touches of Gothic horror that Kurosawa sprinkles throughout his film visually. This may be my favorite film of his to look at apart from “Ran” (even moving past “Dreams”), and the black-and-white imagery in the forest, in particular, is spectacularly shot by cinematographer Asakazu Nakai. Even before the story of betrayal and violence gets underway with the introduction of Lady Asaji, there’s something unsettling that carries throughout the film, and Mifune’s performance is possibly one of his best for Kurosawa. The madness that seeps in with Washizu as he and his wife hatch their plot is palpable, especially when guilt over what he has done in the pursuit of power, and at the besiege of his wife, washes over him further. The scenes where the Great Lord’s visage comes to him at the banquet. Another trip to the forest, and figure who first gave him the prophecy. And finally, the end of the film, where his hubris ultimately gets the better of him in ways he did not expect. This is a work of stark, uncompromising beauty and horror from Kurosawa that is worthy of comparison with the greatest adaptations of Shakespeare in movie history.
