Why you can trust 12DOVE
Made after Rashomon and The Seven Samurai, Throne Of Blood saw writer-director Akira Kurosawa transpose Shakespeare's Macbeth to feudal, war-torn Japan. The result is a powerfully imaginative adaptation which strips away the Bard's introspective soliloquies, instead fusing imagery and sound to convey an atmosphere of doom and fury.
The wild-eyed Toshiro Mifune plays the Macbeth figure of Washizu, who's visited by an evil witch in the forest. She predicts that the samurai will become Lord of Cobweb Castle, but that his reign will be brief and bloody.
Urged on by his treacherous wife Lady Asaji (Isuzu Yamada), Washizu begins to eliminate his opponents.
Influenced by the Japanese Noh theatre tradition - hence the stylised performances and the stage-like interiors - Kurosawa keeps us distanced, both aesthetically and emotionally, from his characters. Superbly shot in high-contrast black and white, Throne Of Blood captures the spirit of Shakespeare's writing, as the driving rain, swirling fog and screeching animals lend metaphorical weight to this tale of murderous human ambition.
The Total Film team are made up of the finest minds in all of film journalism. They are: Editor Jane Crowther, Deputy Editor Matt Maytum, Reviews Ed Matthew Leyland, News Editor Jordan Farley, and Online Editor Emily Murray. Expect exclusive news, reviews, features, and more from the team behind the smarter movie magazine.
Massive Stalker 2 patch starts chipping away at the notoriously glitchy game's worst problems, including over 80 cutscene problems and nearly 2,000 more bugs
Batman V. Superman star Jesse Eisenberg thinks that playing Lex Luthor in the poorly received film "hurt [his] career in a real way"
Preview Grant Morrison and Matt Fraction's one-page horror stories from Ice Cream Man #43