Throne Of Blood

Kurosawa's 1957 adaption of Macbeth. It is a wonderful piece of cinema, a genuinely weighty and powerful masterpiece.
This is Kurosawa's coldest film, firstly we would say due to the mis-en scene. The grey fogs which scatters the light for no eyes to see. The endless confusion of the horse coming towards us, then going away. The characters are either caight in the rooms, or caught in this horribly flat, pale fog. The shots are wide and alienate the characters, again lost in the enviroment. Kurosawa allows little to no empathy, the cool and icy picturing being a change from his usual more active camera. We also have this sense from the music, more bare, certainly not over-intrusive or leading.
The acting is wonderful. Mifune looks older, but he does what he always does, seems to almost vibrate on screen. He does not steal the light always from Kurosawa's sets, but he does always demand attention among the humans. Other characters are equally well sketched, the 'witch' has a slow, horribly white transluscence. The most impressive performance though is by the character of Lady Macbeth. The slow, spidery feel of hers at once cuts to the bone and suggests, from the very outset, madness. The shuffling, with the sound effects and the slow, slow movement, is unnerving and creepy from the first. As is the make-up, and the eerily deliberate dialgoue. One of the scariest screen portrayals we can remember seeing.
With the greatest dramatist ever doing the pacing, Kurosawa couldn't really go wrong, and he doesn't, selecting the correct scenes. It is at once simple but, again, with layers.
Kurosawa's Shakespearean cinema, using the same styles of boldness which works on one level with the subtledties behind if one wishes to see. The images have endless reboundings; few more than the at once obscene, wild, overdramatic, and yet tragic, final scene.
This film is perhaps (with 'Ran', 'The Bad Sleep Well' and some Olivier) the finest Shakespeare adaption we know. Kurosawa, not making a typical Kurosawa film, but rising to around his best.