the spider who knits the net
by
Douglas Messerli
Shinobu
Hashimoto, Ryūzō Kikushima, Akira Kurosawa, and Hideo Oguni (screenplay, based
on Shakespeare’s Macbeth), Akira Kurosawa (director) 蜘蛛巣城 (Throne
of Blood) / 1957
It
is rather amazing that, perhaps, the best adaptation of William Shakespeare’s Macbeth
would come from a Japanese director, the great Akira Kurosawa. Translating
Macbeth’s foggy Scotland heaths to the equally foggy Mount Fuji and Izu
Peninsula, but resetting it in the more ancient culture of feudally-controlled
Japan, the director brilliantly makes it almost appear that the great English
bard, had he known of the Japanese feudal world, might himself have chosen to
set his play into this context.
Certainly, the early scenes, when having
bravely saved the day in battle for King Duncan (Tsuzaki Kunimaru, performed by
Hiroshi Tachikawa), his loyal warriors—Washizu Taketki as Macbeth, starring the
great Toshiro Mifune and Miki
Yoshiaki, the Banquo played Minoru Chiaki—rush forward by command to visit the
castle, titled “The Spider’s Web,” almost insistently losing their way in the
forest surrounding the castle, race their horses in various opposite directions
as they attempt to find their way to their inevitable rewards. The maze in
which they are both caught parallels the lives they shall soon suffer.
The nearly endless sound of the horse’s
hooves, as they run forward and backwards in search of the exit out of the
nettles, sets the pace for this constantly shifting work, in which, at any
given moment, alternates between the old and newer rulers and their
ministrations.
I have always thought the Three Witches "Double,
double toil and trouble" invocation over a stewpot of frogs and newts was
more than a bit silly, particularly in Verdi’s operatic version of the work
which I saw at the LAOpera. Kurosawa resolves this scene of ridiculousness with
the sudden vision of the two lost souls of a single spirit (Chieko Naniwa), who
magically weaving their fates together, tells them of the future: that today
Washizu will be named Lord of the Northern Garrison and Miki will become
commander of the first fortress. Moreover, Washizu soon after will become the
Lord of the Spider-Web Castle, but that Miki’s son will eventually inherit that
role.
In Kurosawa’s version, the witch’s
prediction sounds less like the witches’ terrible predictions than a kind of
Jean Cocteau-like enchantment. These figures are now doomed by the weave and
warp of a magical history that cannot be undone.
Indeed, those fore-tellings do come
true, encouraging the power-hungry Lady Macbeth (Isuzu Yamada) to literally fast-speed
the rule of her husband as predicted through the murder of the King. In this cinematic
reading of Shakespeare’s classic, she might almost be perceived as the perfect
wife, determined to help her husband rise in the ranks from his humble and
faithful obedience to a position, given his courage and bravery, she believes
he deserves.
Yet her evil deeds, serving a drug to
the King’s guard, placing a knife with which Washizu has murdered Tsuzaki
Kunimaru in one of the sleeping guard’s hands, and screaming out the facts that
she herself has incited, is one of the most horrific actions captured on
screen. The guilty Washizu is almost lost in the ruckus of his wife’s behavior.
If he has rather unwillingly killed the King, she has become a kind of trumpet
to deflect their own guilt. In a sense, she has already turned mad, and her
later almost catatonic behavior as she washes her hands over and over seems
inevitable.
Similarly, the couple must now become
determined to kill Washizu’s dearest, now-suspicious friend; and, even worse,
once Washizu discovers that his wife has become pregnant to kill Banquo’s young
son, the foretold future leader—all to no avail, since he later discovers his
wife produces only a still-born, much like their own absurd attempts to gain
power.
If, in the original Shakespeare play
Lady Macbeth’s hand-washing anguish is at the center of the work, in Kurosawa’s
version, Washizu’s (Macbeth) drunkenness is what truly betrays him, as in a
dining stupor he encounters the ghost of his formerly beloved friend, Miki, whom
he has ordered to be killed. His behavior, as with so many couples, is quickly
covered up with the easy excuse the he is simply drunk, speaking “out of his
mind” so to speak.
Desperate for a solution to his terrible
visions, this Macbeth retreats again to the forest to call up the single “witch-weaver”
who explains to him that only when the entire forest rises up to attack him
will he lose his life. But we already know from those early scenes of the film,
the forest has already done that, has confused him and forced him into the terrible
actions he and his wife have since untaken.
If he cannot imagine the forest attacking
him, he soon must face it when the opposing forces of Miki’s son respond with
branches cut in the middle of the night to disguise their approach. Since
Washizu has shared the “ridiculous” prophecy with his own soldiers, when the
forest does actually seem to rise up, his supporters turn against him, shooting
him down with arrows somewhat like St. Sebastiane. As evil as we know him to
be, there is something tragic about Kurosawa’s representation of his slow, very
slow death. This was, after all, a hero who has been corrupted by visions and
his own ambitious wife.
In many respects, Kurosawa seems not
only to adopt—at least in English translation—the cadences of Shakespeare’s
original, but enhances the original, allowing us to further comprehend the
horror of a man provoked to advance beyond his own limitations. Washizu is a strong
soldier, but not a natural leader as we perceive in his early confusion during
his attempt to even enter the sacred court. He has given up his natural role in
order to fit the prognostications of a ghost, an imaginary figure, apparently,
of his own imagination and desires.
Los
Angeles, January 28, 2020
Reprinted
from World Cinema Review (January 2020).
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