The Japanese Scottish Play

Kurosawa's Throne of Blood is an unusual double-bill for Whisky Galore. Well, one is about Scotch and the other is the Japanese remake of the Scottish play. That's about as far as I'll take the comparison.

Throne of Blood is, essentially, a movie of Macbeth done as Kabuki. It is extremely stylized. Toshiro Mifune, in the Macbeth role, grimaces and shouts, his face contorted into a demon mask. The settings are wrapped in mist, or the bare wooden walls of castles and barracks. Some walls feature murals, like a theater backdrop. Some feature bloodstains. The music is stark and haunting. Mifune's descent into madness is captivating.

The visual imagery is striking, for such a bare set. The Japanese title is "Spiderweb Castle", and web imagery abounds. The witch (only one in this version) gives her prophecy spinning silk. The paths in the forest around the castle are called a spiderweb. And Mifune ends up hemmed in by long arrows, as if caught in a web.

Some scenes were a little repetitious - Mifune lost in the woods rides of into mist, we hear the horse whinny, he rides back into view. Then repeat, in a different direction. Then repeat 3 or 4 times more. This may have been an artistic decision to emphasize through repetition. Maybe my modern, Western sensibility can't understand this culturally. Or maybe Kurosawa just misjudged the effect.

This is not a "chambara" (samurai swashbuckler) or a historical drama (we call them cheesecloth dramas, for the cheesecloth you can see at the edge of the samurai wigs). It is more of an art film, almost experimental. One of Kurosawa's first films, They Who Step on Tiger's Tail, is also Kabuki inspired. The Japanese tradition doesn't let him down.