Throne of Blood (1957, Kurosawa Akira)

Co-producer, co-writer, director, and editor Kurosawa loves himself some Macbeth. Throne of Blood is Macbeth in feudal Japan, with Mifune Toshiro and Yamada Isuzu as the doomed couple. Kurosawa and his co-writers structure the film as a historical war epic, with modern-day bookends, and then fit Mifune and Yamada’s Macbeth into the war epic. But as Mifune and Yamada take over the narrative (Throne’s got a sublime pace), the war epic falls back, and it becomes more focused on Mifune as a military commander.

The screenwriters open up the play, adapting it for a different culture (if similar calendar year), with different behavioral norms, but they keep the arc for Mifune—at least in terms of character development–super close to the play. There are a couple things they don’t integrate from the play, but the film’s never the less for it. Not to mention Kurosawa gets to bring in Japanese supernatural; Macbeth’s Weird Sisters—no offense to “Chilling Adventures of Sabrina”—haven’t been a trope since, well, long before motion pictures. And they were an extraordinary event in the original play; you couldn’t just go find yourself a witch.

But in Throne, when Mifune and sidekick Chiaki Minoru come across a forest witch (Naniwa Chieko), they’re not super-surprised. Forest witches aren’t unlikely in Throne’s world. It adds a bunch of texture to Mifune’s descent—including worrying the witch has somehow possessed Yamada–and layers to the relationship with Chiaki. Once Mifune starts fulfilling Naniwa’s prophecy, Chiaki gets a very active role.

Kurosawa does a lot to avoid any stagy vibes—Throne’s bookends start in long shots and gradually move in, showcasing the scale but also the merciless onslaught of time itself (another layer, Throne just as a historical drama). And then, whenever anyone’s in the forest, Kurosawa gets the camera into the literal bushes and looks out at them, making the forest a character. At least for point of view.

But when Mifune gets back home and he and Yamada just sit around and emotionlessly bicker about whether he should take the proverbial horse and kill his boss to fulfill prophecy. These scenes are—almost by definition—stagy. It’s just Mifune and Yamada in an enclosed space, no one else but them. Again, Kurosawa turns it into intense character drama; only we don’t know the stakes. There’s no backstory for Mifune and Yamada in Throne and given her capacity for expression is literally painted over (though the makeup will change, relevantly to the plot), their relationship and its changes throughout are unknowable.

It gives both of them lots of potential for the parts, and both realize it, though Mifune gets more just because of the plot. Because of their opaque relationship, Throne is often a character study–especially given the relatively brief present action.

After the prologue, Throne spends about covering a rebellion via messenger updates to lord Sasaki Takamaru and his court (which includes Shimura Takashi, in what amounts to a cameo). Through the updates, Sasaki and the audience learn samurai Mifune and Chiaki basically save the day single-handedly, defeating the invaders and traitors. When the action cuts to Mifune and Chiaki in the forest, we learn more about their take on the rebellion and the general political situation. Throne is a political drama, but Mifune’s not a political animal, something his introduction establishes. There’s significant foreboding even before they realize they’re lost in the forest and come across the witch.

For a while, since the forest is so militarily important (the main castle is the Forest Castle, after all), it seems Throne will spend a lot of time on it. Especially since, you know, it’s Macbeth. But once Mifune and Chiaki are through, it’s a while before it comes back. On their way out, however, they get lost in the fog and the fog will be around for most of Throne. It actually was already in Throne, in the prologue, with Kurosawa and cinematographer Nakai Asakazu showing off with fading back in time. Throne’s a special effects spectacular. There are some big effects sequences, but then there are some obviously complicated, precisely executed in-camera effects to get some of the shots. It’s beautiful work.

Even being a Macbeth adaptation and working toward potentially familiar plot points, Kurosawa, his co-writers, and Mifune surprise, time and again. So good.

Mifune’s performance is fantastic. Even with the battle action in the third act, it’s all about watching him. With Kurosawa structuring the scene perfectly; Throne’s partially a rumination on the universality of Shakespeare and the potentials of adapting.

Great, disquieting score from Sato Masaru. The technicals are all outstanding.

Yamada and Chiaki are both excellent, with the film hinging on them as well, but Mifune’s the star. Well, Throne all together is the star; truly masterful work from Kurosawa and company.

Scandal (1950, Kurosawa Akira)

Scandal presents an incredibly humane side of Kurosawa, one his historical pictures don’t convey. He shows the desperate sadness of people and offers little visible hope throughout. There’s one scene, when the protagonist (played by Mifune Toshirô) and the main character (Shimura Takashi) come across a pond reflecting the stars and Mifune comments about the frequent beauty one finds in daily life. Scandal isn’t so much about those aesthetic moments, rather the type of person who can fully appreciate them. Mifune’s character, a painter, has it a little easier than Shimura, the alcoholic, gambling lawyer, but that scene equalizes them and allows them to communicate.

Mifune kept reminding me of Gregory Peck in this film–maybe because of the pipe (though I don’t think Peck had the pipe until later than 1950). He’s handsome and kind and he’s definitely the protagonist–but he’s not the main character. Or maybe he’s the main character and Shimura is the protagonist. I can’t remember… The Oxford says the main character and the protagonist used to the same, but in the modern sense, there’s room for a main character and a protagonist. In a Kurosawa film of this era, there’s definite room. He’s not as loose as usual with his character emphasis, but again, until forty minutes into the film, I didn’t know who the story was going to track. Shimura is in lots of Kurosawa films (in addition, of course, to Godzilla), but Scandal is his finest work. His role is the fallen character Renoir never could work out and Kurosawa does it instinctively. Instead of using the character sparsely–as the viewer painfully watches him repeatedly fail everyone he cares about–Kurosawa keeps it going, keeps bringing him back, keeps the viewer in as much pain as the character is in… and he or she is just as able to change the character’s behavior as the character is able to do.

Scandal is really early, so Kurosawa hadn’t gone over to scope yet and watching the film, one can see him pushing the frame. I’ve never seen Kurosawa projected and I realized almost immediately, these squarer images were just as breathtaking as his other framings. I suppose it’s one of the drawbacks of letterboxing–you realize what you’re missing by not seeing it in the theater. Since Scandal is so early, since the story is so traditional (a magazine slanders a romantically innocent pair of celebrities), and since Mifune is such a traditional leading man, it’s shocking when Kurosawa breaks the film out of the traditional form. There’s a wonderful scene at the end: on the right side of the frame are the two heroes and their amiable sidekick and on the left is Shimura. Kurosawa keeps it all in focus–Scandal has no relieving close-ups either–and the scene just goes on for a little while. Something about the positioning of the actors while surveying the desperation… in that shot, it is immediately clear how important a storyteller Kurosawa already was and was going to be.

Scandal is, of course, not readily available in the United States. I watched the UK Masters of Cinema DVD release, which–just like the last Masters of Cinema release I watched–had video problems, this time with interlacing. The film was available on VHS in the States, from Criterion’s parent company’s VHS arm, so maybe there’s a nice region 1 edition in the works.

The most pleasant part about Scandal is it gets better as it goes along, constantly building toward its final achievement.

The Bad Sleep Well (1960, Kurosawa Akira)

I had no idea it was Mifune Toshirô (nor did I get the Hamlet subtext).

Kurosawa mixes genres a lot with The Bad Sleep Well. It’s an incredibly romantic film, but not from the start. The start is a twenty minute wedding scene, all told from reporters’ points of view. It creates a distancing effect, it makes the narrative peculiar. It keeps the audience removed from the characters–in fact, the protagonist isn’t revealed until forty minutes into the film. I know what Mifune looks like, I’ve seen him in quite a few films, but since I wasn’t looking for him (another advantage to going into a film unaware), I let myself get caught up in what was going on.

The distancing–which continues into a police investigation into government corruption–isn’t off-putting. The film follows multiple characters around in a procedural manner Kurosawa used again in High and Low (to much less effect) and manages not to disengage the viewer. This device is successful because no one–not even the viewer–has inkling of what’s going on until a very specific point in the film. It’s not a short, 150 minutes, and this point happens reasonably early… forty-three minutes in or so.

The film develops awkwardly. Significant events occur and the film doesn’t stop. It keeps going after these impossible situations, resolving them, building on them. Besides it not being much like Hamlet, I think it didn’t occur to me it might even be Hamlet because of the feeling. It’s an incredibly tender film and playful film and I’ve never thought of Hamlet as tender or playful. The Bad Sleep Well probably has more feeling in it then any Kurosawa film I’ve seen.

It’s a great film and a perfect example of why writing about great films isn’t any fun. I mean, I don’t have anything to bitch about and its quality wasn’t a surprise. It’s kind of exciting to have seen it, found it (the Criterion DVD only came out a couple months ago, meaning it’s not one of Kurosawa’s best known works in the U.S.), but I really shouldn’t have been expecting anything but a great film. It’s just been too long since I’ve seen Kurosawa in his prime.