Throne of Blood(蜘蛛巣城)
✭ ✭ ✭ ✭
Japan · 1957
1h 48m
Director Akira Kurosawa
Starring Toshirō Mifune, Isuzu Yamada, Akira Kubo, Takashi Shimura
Genre Drama, History
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Returning to their lord's castle, samurai warriors Washizu and Miki are waylaid by three ghostly women who predicts their futures. When the first part of their prophecy comes true, Washizu's scheming wife, Asaji, presses him to speed up the rest of the spirit's prophecy by murdering his lord and taking his place.
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An incredible example of one way to do an adaptation that is simultaneously faithful to the Shakespeare (when fog rolls in and wipes everything off the screen—"life is but a shadow, a candle"), while simultaneously making the story its own. The death scene, also, is entirely appropriate to the film's (and the play's) ideas about fate. Death by arrow has a sense of inevitability to it—there's not much one can do to stop an arrow once it is in flight towards a person, whereas you can fight against or counter a sword. When the arrows finally do begin to fly, Washizu is trapped on either side by arrows, prevented from running from his fate, before the arrows finally strike him..