Friday, September 19, 2014

Kurosawa's Throne of Blood

I can't decide whether or not I like that the speech is more colloquial in this movie. Of course I'm not getting the direct translation from the movie but from what I can tell of the subtitles what they're saying is more modern than Shakespeare's speech. There's something very moving about the way that the original language is portrayed, such as in Goold's Macbeth adaptation, through the inflection and the way they convey emotion. I think that I'm losing a lot by not being able to understand Japanese, because it just sounds like gibberish essentially and the way emotion is expressed is humorous rather than serious. Something positive I can say is that Asaji's lack of emotion was really cool to listen to in Japanese because she sounded very alien and while I read the subtitles I could almost imagine it being spoken in English and that would sound creepy, which seems like an accurate translation. Washizu on the other hand acts comical almost and his use of language leaves me completely not taking him seriously. Of course in a couple scenes that is fitting, like in the scene where Washizu and Miki are having a laugh after leaving the forest, I actually laughed too because they were joking between friends and it was intimate and funny. Also I feel like Washizu was more adamant about not being ambitious in this adaptation, but I'm not actually sure if he was pretending or lying to Asaji because I couldn't read his emotion and his body language and facial expression were always so exaggerated that it was just a guess. Overall an interesting movie, I can see why it's considered highly as far as Macbeth adaptations go, but I liked Goold's better.

Questions:
I'm curious about the blood stained room that scared the servants, I wanted to know what that was about.
Does the witch in this movie say that Miki's son will directly become king after Washizu or like in the original does she make a general statement about his future children?

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