Akira Kurosawa's Throne of Blood is a version of Shakespeare's Macbeth, and the film follows the play in general terms until the end. An examination of the opening scenes and the last scene shows how the filmmaker has approached the material and what changes he has made to achieve a somewhat different effect from the original play while remaining true to its spirit.
The opening scenes in Macbeth set the stage with a sense of doom and foreboding as well as an overlay of the supernatural. In the first scene, the three witches appear amid thunder and lightning and cast a spell over the proceedings. In the second scene, the exposition is managed as messengers deliver the battle news to King Duncan. It is in the third scene where the character of Macbeth is introduced and where the three witches set the tone for the rest of the play. Indeed, their pronouncement that Macbeth will be king is what tempts him (and his wife) to speed the process by killing Duncan.
The witches are on stage, again in a thunderstorm, as the scene begins. They again evoke a sense of the supernatural and through their dialogue show that they are engaged in what might be called witchly pursuits. There is also something slightly comical about the way the witches speak among themselves, as can be seen when the first witch explains where she has been:
A sailor's wife had chestnuts in her lap
And mounch'd and mounch'd and mounch'd (I.iii.4-5).
When the witches hear a drum some distance away, they immediately know that Macbeth is coming.
Macbeth and Banquo enter, see the witches, and Macbeth comments on them, noting that they "look not like th' inhabitants o' th' earth" (I.iii.41). Once the witches have spoken and have told Macbeth of what will be, Banquo asks what they see for him. They answer and then vanish, and from what Banquo and Macbeth say, they do so magically, leaving no trace and seeming to disappear into thin air. The scene...