Skip to main content

A Return to Throne of Blood: Film Platypus

I hung out with film majors during my college years.  It was great.  Not only were they fun people, but I learned a lot about today's dominant story-telling medium.  Some of my best memories revolve around marathon movie watching, particularly when several of the guys were going through the Akira Kurosawa phase.  Recently, my wife and I have been using Netflix to boost our appreciation of great film and I suggested adding a good chunk of Kurosawa to the queue.  So far, we've done Seven Samurai and Throne of Blood.

I don't think I've seen Throne of Blood (1957), Kurosawa's retelling of Macbeth set in feudal Japan, in about a decade.  Watching it again last night reminded me why this film drew the admiration of T.S. Eliot himself.  The black and white is used to maximum effect creating a world of shadows and mists that perfectly underscores the moral murk of the story.  The special effects are simple and evocative.  The acting is wonderful with Isuzu Yamada's portrayal of the Lady Macbeth analog, Asaji, as the best I've ever seen.  Toshiro Mifune as the Macbeth character, Taketoki Washizu, is stellar as ever and wins the method acting god award for performing his final scene while under fire from real arrows.  Most importantly, Kurosawa's adaptation stands completely on its own: no knowledge of the source material is necessary to appreciate this monument of cinematic art.  Coming from the English speaking side of the equation, the transferal from original material to new composition is complete.  It would have made that consummate borrower and adapter, Shakespeare, proud.

So, whether you're a film buff, a Shakespeare enthusiast, or just like a good story, consider moving Throne of Blood strait to the top of your Netflix queue.  I did, and I wasn't disappointed.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Platypus Reads Part XXVII

Thoughts after reading the "Iliad" to prepare a Greece unit for my students: -Hector is a jerk until he's dead. He even advocates the exposure of Achaean corpses and then has the cheek to turn around and ask Achilles to spare his. He rudely ignores Polydamas' prophecies and fights outside the gate to save his pride knowing full well what it will cost his family and city. After he's dead, he becomes a martyr for the cause. -Agamemnon has several moments of true leadership to balance out his pettiness. In this way, he's a haunting foil to Achilles: the two men are more alike than they want to acknowledge. -We see that Achilles is the better man at the funeral games of Patroclos. His lordliness, tact, and generosity there give us a window into Achilles before his fight with Agamemnon and the death of Patroclos consumed him. -Nestor is a boring, rambling, old man who's better days are far behind him, and yet every Achaean treats him with the upmo...
15 comments
Read more

SNES as Money Well Spent: Platypus Nostalgia

I got my Super Nintendo Entertainment System when I was eleven years old.  That's a couple years after it first came out.  The occasion was a little dramatic: to celebrate the end of a two-and-a-half year course of treatment for cancer.  I had no idea that it would be waiting for me at home after the final doctors visit.  It was a nice spring day, the trees were waving gently in the breeze outside the bay windows.  With a cup of tea resting on the coffee table, I set down to play.  What was that first game?  It was The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past .  Around twenty years later, my SNES still works as does that Zelda cartridge.  It's been a long way from boyhood in Southern Connecticut to manhood in North Houston, but I'm still playing. Why am I still playing?  There were stretches when I didn't.  Many times, I've just been too busy.  There were also seasons when it felt embarrassing to still be playing video games....
10 comments
Read more

Seeing Beowulf Through Tolkien: The Platypus Reads Part CXCIX

After spending a few weeks wrestling with Tolkien's interpretation of Beowulf , I found myself sitting down and reading Seamus Heaney's translation of the text during a spare moment.  I came to the place where Beowulf presents Hrothgar with the hilt of the ancient sword that slew Grendel's mother.  Hrothgar looks down at the hilt with its ancient runes and carvings depicting the war between the giants and God and meditates on the fortunes of men.  In a flash of insight, I thought: this is the whole poem! Let me explain.  Tolkien believed that the genuine contribution of the Northern peoples to European culture was the theory of courage.  The Northern heroes, at their best, were men who fought for order against chaos -a battle they knew they were doomed to lose.  If they were true heroes, their souls would join the gods and aid them in the final battle against darkness and its monsters and again go down fighting, spitting in the face of the meaninglessness...
3 comments
Read more