Throne of Blood (Kurosawa, 1957): Barbican Cinema, 2pm
This screening will be introduced by Japanese film expert Tony Rayns and feature a Q&A with renowned theatre director Yukio Ninagawa. Details here.
Time Out review:
'Akira Kurosawa's adaptation of Macbeth is
reckoned by many, Peter Brook among them, to be one of the very few
successful efforts at filming Shakespeare. Translating the familiar
story to medieval Japan, with Macbeth as the samurai Washizu (Toshiro Mifune),
the adaptation deletes most of the minor characters, transforms the
witches' scenes into a magical encounter with an old woman spinning in a
forest glade, perches 'Cobweb Castle' high in the hilly moorland where
the clouds roll by like ground-fog, and conceives a stunningly graphic
fate for the usurper, clinging stubbornly to his promise of glory even
as he is being turned into a human pin-cushion by volleys of arrows.
It's visually ravishing, as you would expect, employing compositional
tableaux from the Noh drama, high contrast photography, and
extraordinary images of rain, galloping horses, the birds fleeing from
the forest; all of which contribute to the expression of a doom-laden
universe whose only way out for its tragic hero is auto-destruction.'
Here is the trailer.
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