AKIRA KUROSAWA, THRONE OF BLOOD (THE CASTLE OF THE SPIDER'S WEB - KUMONOSU-DJO) (1957) 1HR 50
THE DIRECTOR: AKIRA KUROSAWA (1910 - )
One of the greatest and certainly the best known (in the West) Japanese filmmakers. Born 1910 in Tokyo. Studied at Doshusha School of Western Painting. His popularity in the West can be attributed to the way he is able to combine traditional Japanese and Western elements (due to his study of Western painting, literature and political philosophy) in his filmmaking. His early films were made under the militaristic dictatorship which controlled Japan during WW2. The degree to which such films as The Men who tread on the Tiger's Tail (1945) or Judo Saga (1943) were propaganda for the military regime or examples of stylistic experimentation is debated. Before he enjoyed creative freedom in his filmmaking AK had to endure the controls and censorship of the post-war American occupation. Films like No Regrets for Our Youth (1946) might be regarded as just another form of political propaganda (this time pro-democracy). Yet themes which were to recurr in his later work appeared at this time as well as his distinctive style which incorporated elements of the silent cinema, Soviet cinema and the Golden Age of Hollywood filmmaking.
One critic has argued that:
Above all, Kurosawa is a modern filmmaker, portraying the ethical and metaphysical dilemmas characteristic of postwar culture, the world of the atomic bomb, which has rendered certainty and dogma absurd. The consistency at the heart of Kurosawa's work is his exploration of the concept of heroism. Whether portraying the world of the wandering swordsman, the intrepid policeman or the civil servant, Kurosawa focuses on men faced with ethical and moral choices. The choice of action suggests that Kurosawa's heroes share the same dilemma as Camus's existential protagonists, but for Kurosawa the choice is to act morally, to work for the betterment of one's fellow humans. Perhaps because Kurosawa experienced the twin devastations of the great Kanto earthquake of 1923 and WWII, his cinema focuses on times of chaos. From the destruction of the glorious Heian court society that surrounds the world of RASHOMON (1950), to the neverending destruction of the civil war era of the 16th century that gives THE SEVEN SAMURAI (1954) its dramatic impetus, to the savaged Tokyo in the wake of US bombing raids in DRUNKEN ANGEL (1948), to the ravages of the modern bureaucratic mind-set that pervade IKIRU (1952) and THE BAD SLEEP WELL (1960), Kurosawa's characters are situated in periods of metaphysical eruption, threatened equally by moral destruction and physical annihilation in a world in which God is dead and nothing is certain. But it is his hero who, living in a world of moral chaos, in a vacuum of ethical and behavorial standards, nevertheless chooses to act for the public good. (Cinemania95).
AK is appreciated in the West also for his adaptations of Western literary classics, especially Shakespeare whose work seems well suited to being relocated with minimal distortion to medieval Japan: Throne of Blood (1957) (from Macbeth) and Ran (1985) (from King Lear, about a warlord who hands over his estates to his sons and triggers a power struggle). He is also willing to adapt Western popular culture, like the Western, as in The Seven Samurai (which in turn was remade by Sturges as a 'real" Western as The Magnificnet Seven (1960), thus completing the circle). In his more recent films AK has dealt with the issue of the destruction of nature in Akia Kurosawa's Dreams (1990) and the memories of the atomic bombing of Kagasaki through the eyes of an old woman who survived it in Rhapsody in August (1991).
Other films of note: Kagemusha (1980) about a 16thC thief who is spared execution if he agrees to act as a dead warlord's double in order to prevent a power struggle; The Hidden Fortress (1958) an adventure comedy which was the inspiration for George Lucas' Star Wars; Jojimbo (1961) and Sanjuro (1962) tongue-in-cheek Samurai "Westerns" in which a Samurai for hire plays off two warring factions who vie for control of a town (inspiration for the spaghetti western A Fist Full of Dollars which started Clint Eastwood's career in westerns.)
LITERARY SOURCE
William Shakespeare, Macbeth ()
THE FILM
Cast
- Taketoki Washizu (Macbeth)- Toshiro Mifune
- Asaji (his wife or Lady Macbeth) - Isuzu Yamada
- Yoshiaki Miki, his friend (Banquo) - Minoru Chiaki
- Yoshiteru (Miki's son) - Akira Kubo
- Kuniharu Tsuzuki (Duncan) - Takamaru Sasaki
- Kunimaru (Kuniharu's son) - Yoichi Tachikawa
- Noriyasu Odagura - Takashi Shimura
- Witch - Chieko Naniwa
Based on Shakespeare's play Macbeth and, in the view of one critic Ritchie, "the definitive statement on man's solitude, his ambition, his self-betrayal" (p. 124); in the view of another, Grigori Kozinstev, "the finest of all Shakespeare movies." Set in medieval Scotland, written about 1603-1606 when James I had become king of both England and Scotland (1603-25), assertion of idea of absolutist monarchy by Stuarts, foiling of plot to blow up houses of parliament (Gunpowder Plot 1605) in response to banning of bishops, with trial and execution of conspirators (Guy Fawkes) underway when play being written.
Richie summarises the plot of the film as follows:
General Washizu and his friend, General Miki, are lost in the forest and meet a witch who prophesies that Washizu will reign but that Miki's heirs will prevail. They are rewarded for valour but Washizu kills, first, his lord, and then, Miki. A second visit to the witch tells him that he is safe until the forest moves. Miki's son attacks the castle using as protection and camouflage the trees of the forest. Washizu's son is still-born, his wife goes mad, and he is immolated by the arrows of his own men. (p. 117)
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Jack J. Jorgens, Shakespeare on Film (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1977).
Donald Richie, The Films of Akira Kurosawa (Berekely: University of California Press, 1984).
THINGS TO NOTE
1. The film begins and ends with a shot of cemetry stones and the ruins of a castle, thus the story is told from the future after the events depicted had taken place centuries before. The moral lessons as told by the chorus concerns human ambition to seize and hold power (symbolised by the fortress):
Behold within this place now desloate
Stood once a mighty fortress,
Lived a proud warrior
Murdered by ambition,
His spirit walking still.
Vain pride, then as now,
Will lead ambition to the kill...
Still his spirit walks, his fame is known,
For what once was is now yet true,
Murderous ambition will pursue
Beyond the grave to give its due...
2. AK's use of devices drawn from Noh theatre: the chorus, the linking of style and story, the conventionalised movement of the actors' bodies and the faces like Noh masks (especially Lady Asaji),
3. The "evil" women (the witch and Lady Asaji) who mislead or drive the men to do evil acts. Asaji claims a man who does not have ambition is not a man.
4. The issue of moral choice between good and evil. A warning about violating the commandment "Thou shalt not kill". The witch appears to favour the Hitler or Stalin option, namely:
If you choose ambition, then choose it honestly, with cruelty... if you would make a mountain of the dead, then pile it to the sky; if you would shed blood, then let it run as a river.
5. The cycle of violence in which men become trapped. War does not lead to peace but more war. The murder of one leader by a pretender results in the inevitable murder of him in turn by another who claims leadership. Those whom one thought were friends or allies turn against one. Those who choose to better themselves through violence do not find happiness but madness and death. The fortresses men build to protect themselves from enemies without offer no protection from the enemies within.
6. The purpose AK had in making the film: "Why - I ask - is it that human beings cannot get along with each other, why they can't live with each other with more good will?" (Ritchie, p. 119). In orther words, why do wars take place?
7. The simple visual elements of the film: fog, wind, trees, castle. Film starkly in B&W in mostly log-shot (no close-ups).
8. The banners of Washizu and Miki: scorpion/centipede and rabbit.
9. The witch - the piles of skeltons of dead warriors around her hut in the forest, the raising of warrior ghosts at the banquet. Her warnings about the transience of what ambitious warriors strive for:
Men are vain and death is long
And pride dies first within the grave
For hair and nails are growing still
When face and fame are gone.
Nothing in this world will save
Or measure up man's actions here,
Nor in the next, for there is none:
This life must end in fear.
Only evil may maintain
An after life those who will
Who love this world, who have no son
To whom ambition calls.
Even so this false fame falls.
Death will reign, man dies in vain. (quoted in Jorgens, p. 159)
10. The theme of repetition, as if men are trapped into making the same poor moral choices and repeating history over and over again. No learning and no progression. The messengers from the battlefield. W & M getting lost in the fog in the forest. The mad, riderless horse rushing about the castle. Lady Asaji washing her hands.
11. The death of Washizu at the hands of his own men (like St. Sebastian?)
12. The contrasts between the castle (man-made, source of protection from enemies and shelter from elements) and the forest (inhabited by ghosts and witches, labyrinthine).
13. AK used art consultants on musha-e (picture scrolls of battle scenes) and layout of castles. Sets built on Mount Fuji (mists and black volcanic soil) with help of local US Marine Corps base (including entire Marine MP battalion) and Tokyo sets.