Rashomon got its hooks in me, so I decided to make it a Kurosawa marathon weekend by diving into Throne of Blood, which I’ve been looking forward to for a while (I also watched Sanjuro, having enjoyed its predecessor Yojimbo a while back, but both are sadly out of the time scope of this project). My feelings on Throne of Blood are similar to Kurosawa’s other Shakespeare adaptation, Ran, in that I think it’s cool to create a cross-cultural treatment of these Western classics and reinterpret them through the lens of Noh theater, but maybe due to my own tastes or lack of familiarity with the conventions of Noh, they just didn’t quite fully land with me. It does feel a little like sacrilege to admit that I found an incredibly seminal piece of cinema to be kind of mid, but the good news is that I’m not an official film reviewer and I’m allowed to give scores based off of my own purely subjective vibes.
One thing I’ll definitely praise in this film was its spooky atmosphere–from the sinisterly named Spider Web Castle and its ominous maze-like forest, to the mysterious locked room in the Northern Garrison covered in permanent bloodstains, to the creepy forest witch singing a song about rotting flesh while spinning robotically on her loom. Macbeth has always been one of Shakespeare’s eerier plays, but I think Kurosawa pushed the film into almost psychological horror territory–even the sudden flute note when Lady Asaji announces her pregnancy felt like a micro jumpscare.
Speaking of Lady Asaji, let’s talk about her performance. I have mixed feelings–on one hand, her cool, almost emotionless delivery was very creepy, and there was something about it that felt parallel to the witch’s composure. My understanding is that she’s also meant to be based off of a character in Noh theater tradition. That said, from my Western perspective, it felt a bit harder to grasp onto her as a fully realized character, especially in contrast to Washizu’s far more intense and emotive expression (shoutout once again to Toshiro Mifune, whose performances never disappoint).
I suppose if I had to articulate my complaint about this film, it’s that it often felt a bit anticlimactic and sparse. I don’t mind if a film is a little slow or takes its time building tension, but I felt like a lot of things happened off-screen–we barely see Washizu interact with Lord Tsuzuki, nor do we directly witness his murder, we miss Washizu’s further discussion with Miki about the future of his lordship, nor do we know anything about Washizu’s plan to murder him and his son until the moment his messenger shows up with Miki’s head, and of course, we don’t even get a climactic final battle (although Washizu’s final struggle against an almost comical amount of arrows from his men was pretty iconic). Not that I think this movie needs a bunch of action scenes, but I felt like we were missing some character moments. That so much of the movie focuses on Washizu and Lady Asaji’s conversations give it a weirdly fishbowl quality, which I suppose is interesting metaphorically, but for me, not the most engaging.
Given that this film was a departure from the usual Macbeth adaptations that are somewhat bound to the bard’s language, I feel like there could have been room to expand more on additional moments between characters. All in all, I think this film had some cool moments, and was obviously masterfully made, it just didn’t quite scratch my itch.
Am I not Entertained? 
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