Throne Of Blood

The best film adaptation of Macbeth is Akira Kurosawa's 1957 Throne Of Blood, which is more a "suggested by" Macbeth than anything else, as it is moved from medieval Scotland to the feudal wars of Japan. The basic story is the same, but much of it is changed. Still, the heart of the tale is there, and the meaning.

Kurosawa used elements of Noh theater in the film, with characters using facial expressions like masks. Toshiro Mifune, who plays the Macbeth stand-in, Washizu, has a face of a warrior, often with his eyes bulging. Isuzu Yamada plays his wife, who gives an extraordinary performance of very little movement. She hatches her plot to kill the lord of the castle while prone, not blinking. When she does move it's with as much economy as possible. At one point, she leaves the room to get the poison she will use on the guards of the Great Lord, disappearing into a room of complete darkness, and then reappearing, holding a vessel of poison.

The film was shot in black and white, and makes effective use of fog (most of it was real fog, which was a natural occurrence at the base of Mount Fuji). It also makes use of the forest, called the Spider's Web Forest in the film. At the beginning of the film, coming back from their victory, Washizu and his friend Miki (Banquo) get lost in the forest, and end up coming across a spectral figure operating a spinning wheel. She is the one who gives them the prophecy (Kurosawa cut down the witches from three to one). She also says, "How strange are human beings. Terrified to look into the bottom of their hearts."

Some of the key points of Shakespeare's Macbeth are there, some are not. The banquet scene, in which Miki's ghost shows up, is there, but Washizu doesn't know yet that he's dead. Also, his wife becomes pregnant, something not in Shakespeare. She does have the sleepwalking scene in which she constantly washes her hands, but she does not die. Also, the character of Macduff is vastly reduced, and Washizu is killed by his own men, falling under a hail of arrows. The scene in which the forest moves to attack the castle is done chillingly, with the trees actually seeming like they are moving.

I've seen this film at least three times and it never fails to give me chills and move me. Kurosawa was one of the greatest film directors in history.