Throne of Blood

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Template:Infobox Film Throne of Blood (1957), original title Kumonosu-jō (蜘蛛巣城, "Spider Web Castle"), is a film by Akira Kurosawa, which transposes the plot of William Shakespeare’s play Macbeth to medieval Japan.

Kurosawa was an admirer of Noh drama, and acknowledged the stylistic influence it had on Throne of Blood. This influence can be seen in many aspects of the film, from the staging, to the characterizations, to the editing and direction.

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Plot

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Kurosawa follows the events of Macbeth fairly closely, although Kurosawa’s Washizu (played by Toshiro Mifune) is arguably less evil than Macbeth, while his wife Asaji (played by Isuzu Yamada) is even nastier than Lady Macbeth. They both get their comeuppance, Washizu in a spectacular scene where he is shot by his own archers and stumbles forward like a porcupine before being shot in the neck and staring into the camera as he dies.

The film, shot in black and white, is arguably one of the finest of its time, creating a phantasmal world between the witch that gives Washizu what he wants and the lunar landscape of his heart and his home.

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Trivia

The famous arrow scene near the end was in fact done with real arrows. That is, the arrows hitting the wooden planks were not done with special effects, but rather choreographed with archers. Mifune waves his arms to brush away the arrows sticking from the planks, indicating to them that he wanted to go in that particular direction. The real arrows were included to get Mifune's facial expressions of real-life fear, which is exceptionally hard to imitate. Of course, the arrows that hit the Mifune character were bamboo fakes. Also, if you look closely at the arrow protruding from his neck and play those few seconds frame-by-frame, you see the flying arrow travel behind his neck and the false arrow's U-shaped loop can be seen in the collars of his armour. But nicely done, nonetheless.

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