Throne of Blood

At the School of Drama, as a student I watched this masterpiece of Kurosawa's interpretation of Shakespeare's Macbeth. Ever since I tried to understand the brilliance of the cinematic styled on Noh , Japanese classical theatre.

Kurosawa shows how the two cultural strains, eastern and western, interlock and interact. The one illumines the other.

The director is not afraid to add his own flourishes to the well-known story. He creates a form which encapsulates the spirit of the play, interweaving the related themes of treachery, blood and guilt..
The death scene, with its railing, hysterical protagonist -
(played marvelously by Toshiro Mifune) and relentless volleys of arrows has enormous power and lives long in my memory.