Last night’s Kurosawa was THRONE OF BLOOD (1957), which made me think of the poetic in cinema, which I take to be something like a complex idea or feeling communicated precisely through a minimum of means that nonetheless reverberates, the initial clarity opening itself up in the viewer to development, change or even contradiction.  Kurosawa’s great and beautiful adaptation of Shakespeare’s Macbeth is full of such moments – Washizu (Toshiro Mifune) and Wiki (Takashi Shimura) coming in and out of the fog in Cobweb Forest; Washizu’s wife, Asaji (Isuzu Yamada) advocating for murder, walking into a dark room, with only the sound of her kimono, swishing on the floor, into the darkness, and out of it holding an urn; the final, relentless and inescapable hail of arrows on the usurper at the end. It’s in this sense that Kurosawa reminds me of John Ford, who is one of the greatest exponents of the poetic in cinema.

Throne of Blood is also an adaptation of a play and ‘the theatrical’ is also evident everywhere in this great work of cinema. I know practically nothing of Noh theatre but even I can detect its influence in the design and performance of Isuzu Yamadi as Lady Asaji, the Lady Macbeth analogue in the film, her clothing, make-up, the way of walking, the minimalist movement. There are traces of it too in the design of the spirits in the forest (here not only the make-up and special effects but also the chanting, the music). But the uses of the theatrical in Throne of Blood extends beyond this. Think of the very beginning where battles are won, lost, won again, in a few minutes, all happening offscreen, as they would need to be narrated in a play (though here also so beautifully dramatized visually). The use of space also seems theatrical to me, minimalist, sparse, with figures placed in it in a highly stylised way.

People have argued that it can’t be an adaptation of Shakespeare because it doesn’t deploy the language. But it’s Kurosawa’s Macbeth that we’re seeing here and it has its own language and its own poetry. The plot is taken from Shakespeare but the language and poetry is all sights, sounds, rhythms. I found it beautiful.

A last observation is how strikingly Kurosawa uses the elements (fire in STRAY DOG), wind and rain in numerous films, here the fog. The whole film is drenched in it. And the scenes in the forest, where Kurosawa, who’s clearly learned from Ford, films from below, through bushes and trees, where it’s the entanglements that are in focus, and the riders lost, often out of focus in the background, running in and out of the fog, is quite extraordinary.

Clips:

fog

forest and fog:

sound and darkness:

A hail of arrows:

José Arroyo