Film · 1957 · Jidaigeki
Throne of Blood
Directed by Akira Kurosawa
1957
Japan
★ 6.8 editorial score
Shakespeare's Macbeth moved to sixteenth-century Japan with every line of the poetry gone: Kurosawa substitutes fog, Noh masks worn as faces, and a forest that seems to be watching the castle.
“An adaptation of Shakespeare's Macbeth that turned 'the Scottish play' into a ravishingly visual exploration of the warrior traditions of Japanese myth. It was, for what it's worth, TS Eliot's favourite film. The drama is presented with stark economy, its words subservient to the slow exposition of its plot, and the characterisation admittedly less subtle than Shakespeare's.”
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