This blog entry is part of my "movie recommendation site suggestions". Read more about that here.
Kumonosu jô (Throne of Blood)
I was generally aware of the plot of MacBeth, bu I had never actually seen a full staging or presentation of it or read it all the way through, so in preparation of this movie I read the play first to see what differences Kurosawa made in his Japanese version.
First of all, I was a bit disappointed when reading the play. I did read it through pretty quickly and over a period of several days, but even despite that I don't sense it had the depth or resonance of Shakespeare, or Othello, or my favorite of his tragedies King Lear. Of course King Lear is his longest play (I think...) and MacBeth is his shortest tragedy. Maybe what you get in compactness you lose in depth sometimes.
Maybe it was just because of the material, even though Kurosawa made several changes, that I was slightly disappointed here. Between Kurosawa, Mizoguchi, Kobayashi and others I've been seeing lots of fantastic historical Japanese films lately, so this one just didn't measure up.
Man gets overly ambitious and goes on a killing spree. Gets what he deserves in the end, and the cycle continues. Or is it all just fate? Not that there aren't a lot of great piece of work on this premise, but the MacBeth story just doesn't seem terribly poignant to me. Although I still plan on seeing Polanski's super bloody version some time just based on the heavy recommendations from SkyPilot.
*SPOILER* Still, it is pretty sweet to see a guy completely pumped with arrows, even as ridiculous as it seems.
Rating: 8/10