Throne of Blood
Akira Kurosawa's film Throne of Bl
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Akira Kurosawa's film Throne of Blood (1957) is a free "adaptation" of William Shakespeare's Macbeth. The film has been much honored and highly regarded, but at the same time the critical reception accorded the film has raised certain questions about the meaning of adaptation, about the degree to which this film can be called an adaptation, about how successful it can be deemed as an adaptation, and about the degree to which one should be expected in making an adaptation to adhere to the text. There are clear differences between a stage play and a film, and the techniques of the playwright and the techniques of the filmmaker are quite different even when they intend to convey the same plot, the same themes, and even the same general atmosphere and tone. Even some of those critics who have praised the film for its power have also questioned whether it can be called an adaptation of Macbeth and have referred to the film as a "transmutation, a "distillation," a "transportation," "not an adaptation," and "an illusion" of Macbeth. How much of this is in reference to some real difference between whatever Kurosawa has done in transferring the story of Macbeth to Throne of Blood. Clearly, these critics have some conception of what an adaptation should be, though they do not define it, and they see Throne of Blood as falling short in some element that would make it fit their definition of adaptation. An examination of the source material--Macbeth--the film Thron
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d her handwashing is pure Noh drama" (Richie 117).
Of course, the handwashing is also pure Shakespeare, which may be another reason the material attracted Kurosawa in the first place.
Richie finds that there are other Noh borrowings associated with the other "evil" figure in the film, the witch. Her hut resembles a Noh property, and her makeup is similar to the ghost-mask of the Noh drama. The voice she uses is husky and unintonated, as is true of the Noh actor. The sounds she makes as she spins are also the types of sound heard in the Noh drama. Richie notes, "The formal, closed, ritual, limited quality of the Noh is thus associated with the two women in the picture" (Richie 118).
PLOT AND MEANING
The themes in Throne of Blood are themes that Kurosawa has explored elsewhere in his cinema and that clearly have an importance to him. They are also themes that emerge from the Shakespeare play, though the emphasis may be somewhat different. Stephen Prince notes how Kurosawa tends to view the larger context of established society in his films as being corrupted by the pursuit of position, wealth, or property, a statement not unlike the Elizabethan conception of the inter-relatedness of the life of society with the life of t
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Approximate Word count = 10788
Approximate Pages = 43 (250 words per page)
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