Monday, August 22, 2011 at 3:08PM 
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button This film takes a lot of heat from critics and arm-chair reviewers a lot, but I don't care. I really dig this flick.
Monday, August 22, 2011 at 3:03PM 
Buffalo Boy posterIt's been almost a year since I watched Minh Nguyen-Vo's 2004 film Buffalo Boy, so my recolection is a little fuzzy. I remember being kind of bored by it, but the Vietnemese coming of age story stuck with me for weeks after my viewing. If you can find a copy somewhere check it out, I would watch it again.
Sunday, August 21, 2011 at 4:04PM 
Ok, so my 2-week vacation quickly turned into a 3-month hiatus. To my three or four regular readers (hi dad) I apologize. While I have not kept up on my end of the bargain as far as writing goes, I have still been keeping track of all the films I have watched. In the next few days I am going to be updating my giant (150+) backlog, to see just how close to 500 I got before my 365-day deadline is up on August 31st. I will mostly just publish the name of the film, and perhaps a few thoughts, but will probably not write any reviews. On September 1st I will officially start back at 0 and once again attempt to hit the 500 film milestone. I will be attending the Big Bear Horror Film Festival later next month, so that should provide a healthy number of films to start the list off with! All right guys, like always keep reading and leaving comments, and if you have any ideas or film recommendations let me have them.
-Brandon
Monday, May 16, 2011 at 10:50AM 
There is a tension that permeates Monte Hellman’s The Shooting (1967) until the very last frame. An uneasiness that is not unlike the feeling you get walking alone to the bathroom in the middle of the night, pitch black, and all of a sudden a tiny tremor of terror grabs a hold of the tiny hairs on the back of your neck and for a brief moment you feel the presence of a stranger. Of course, as soon as you find safety in the warmth of the bathroom light the feeling disappears, and just as quickly as that feeling of dread forced its way inside your head, it flees, forgotten. Yeah, The Shooting is similar to a dreadful midnight spell; accept even as the credits roll, and the bodies begin to burn in the desert sun that feeling will persist.
The film follows gunman Will Gashade (Warren Oates), an ex-bounty hunter who returns to camp to find his friend Leland deader than he left him, and Coley (Will Hutchins), his simple-minded sidekick, dumber than he remembers. With little time to contemplate their situation, the duo meets up with a mysterious young woman (Millie Perkins), whose intentions are as shadowed as her face by the black cowboy hat she wears atop her head. She gives no name, but does offer the men a job; escort her across the desert to an undisclosed location. Screenwriter Carol Eastman cleverly leaves Will in the dark for most of the picture; this is an adventure the audience and the protagonist will have to survive together.
Matters worsen for Will when he meets up Billy Spears (Jack Nicholson), a dangerous hired gun if you’ve ever seen one and obvious wild card. There is an expected delight watching Nicholson evolving his craft so early in his career. Spears is a time bomb, a reckless and feral maniac that you can’t take your eyes off of for fear of what he might do. Like so many of Nicholson’s antagonists, Spears’ is as enigmatic as he is ferocious, taking delight from not only living life, but also taking it. When the woman asks Billy if he had ever left a friend in the desert to die, and he quickly says he has never had one, you believe him.
Will comes to find out the woman is trailing someone, although the goal is as puzzling as the journey. Eventually all is made clear, or at least as clear as Hellman prefers. Before the credits roll Hellman finally lets up and reveals the “what,” but leaves the “why” up to the viewer. The film’s climactic showdown is bewildering yet satisfying, delivering an “Oh yeah” moment that is immediately followed by incertitude. Theorized as being a cinematic metaphor of the John F. Kennedy assassination in 1963, The Shooting’s success thematically is perhaps is impressive now than its visual splendor. What is for certain is the film’s lasting impression on the genre, and how it redefined narrative expectations to produce a singular western experience
Like always, link the site and leave any comments you may have on Nicholson's career or The Shooting if you have seen it.
Sunday, May 15, 2011 at 6:19PM 
Sucker Punch Banner Poster
In 2004 director Zack Snyder re-animated the struggling zombie genre with his comically gruesome Dawn of the Dead. Itself a remake of the 1978 George Romero classic of the same name, Snyder’s reimagining took advantage of over 25-years of technological advances in blood and guts to create the most stunningly graphic film in the genre. Every frame was covered with human viscera, his mise-en-scene dripping with mortal ichor. With Dawn of the Dead Snyder crawled out of the depths of music video hell, and forced his name down the throats of cinefiles and casual moviegoers alike. With three more feature films under his belt by 2010, the Green Bay, Wisconsin native had comfortably dug himself a comfy little niche within the industry. To put it simply, you know a Zach Snyder film when you see one. Making films specifically for the geek obsessed attention deficit generation; Snyder refuses to lose your interest, willingly throwing any image conceivable on screen to keep your eyes plastered and your mind from wandering. Lest we forget, this is the man who gave us a 30-foot blue penis to stare at, realistic physics and all.
Sucker Punch poster
His latest effort, the regrettably named Sucker Punch (2011), carries the mark of his earlier films, but does nothing more than prove the shallowness of his instincts. To call Sucker Punch a glorified music video would be an insult to the guy who was paid DGA minimum to direct the video of Rebecca Black’s follow-up to “Friday.” Offering less substance than a condom used by Michael J. Anderson, Sucker Punch overconfidently rests on its visual laurels, erroneously believing a film can look good without having anything to say. How can a film showcasing five beautiful women battling steampunk zombie German soldiers in World War I trench warfare be so boring? With little heart and even less sense, Sucker Punch pushes the boundaries of consumer’s interest, perhaps proving once and for all that audiences are not riveted by spectacle alone.
Recounting the plot of Sucker Punch should be a mandatory exercise for all Creative Writing majors with an emphasis in WTF. In a broad sense, Sucker Punch is can be broken down into three specific acts: the music video, the video game, and finally the dramatic ending. Taken alone, each section is mindlessly inexplicable, barely stringing together any glimpse of a coherent narrative. However, it is the combination of all three acts that truly mystifies.
Sucker Punch follows Baby Doll (Emily Browning) a young woman who is sent to an insane asylum by her evil child molesting stepfather (Gerard Plunkett) following the death of her mother and the accidental shooting her younger sister. The asylum is controlled by the ruthlessly and conniving Blue (Oscar Isaac), and his brainless henchmen, including his somewhat reluctant abettor and resident psychiatrist Madam Gorski (Carla Gugino). The Stepfather (he is never given a name) pays Blue to forge all of the paperwork needed to have the asylum’s doctor (Jon Hamm) perform a lobotomy on his poor stepdaughter. As the doctor’s hammer falls in slow motion towards the chisel that rests atop her eye socket, Baby Doll successfully escapes inside her imagination, apparently avoiding the inevitable vegetification that awaits her in reality, and presents a chance for her to somehow form a plan.
Sucker Punch poster
All of this plays out in the first 5-minutes of the film in a near wordless musical montage. Perhaps a recap is in order: In the first 300 seconds, give or take a minute or two, the protagonist is orphaned, catches her stepfather sexually assault her much younger sister, accidently commits murder, is deemed insane by a judge, sent to an insane asylum, and is about to be unlawfully lobotomized. There is little dialogue in the opening moments of the film; instead Snyder tries to create both emotion and interest with images and music. In his 2009 adaptation of the Watchmen graphic novel, the director often chose tepid, on the nose pop songs to accompany the more melodramatic scenes in the film. Who could forget Simon and Garfunkel’s Sound of Silence echoing through the Comedian’s funeral, or Leonard Cohen serenading the outrageously graphic sex scene shared between Silk Spectre (Malin Akerman) and Nite Owl (Patrick Wilson)? Two years later Snyder hasn’t so much evolved as just perfected his ability to choose the most hackneyed ballads. The film’s opening pageant of platitude blasts a desperately sullen cover of the Eurythmics’ hit “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)”, sung by the Browning herself, which may have been a smart decision if employing trite pop-hits as a tool for exposition was a good thing. Instead, like so many aspects of the film, Snyder mixes novelty with creativity and produces a clichéd disaster of an introduction.
There are three individual, albeit somehow connected dimensions of Baby Doll’s reality in which she must exist in Sucker Punch. The first is the actual real world that takes place in the asylum, where Baby Doll is joined by fellow inmates Sweet Pea (Abbie Cornish), Rocket (Jena Malone), Blondie (Vanessa Hudgens) and Amber (Jamie Chung). The second world takes place inside Baby Doll’s head, where she transforms the insane asylum into a ritzy cathouse of sorts where the girls are forced to perform lurid strip teases for the club’s influential clientele. It is at this point the film’s somewhat forgivable, puerile set-up devolves into a vapid netherworld of shameless exploitation. Resembling a younger Al Pacino in Dick Tracy (1990), Blue runs the brothel with an iron fist, having no qualms killing any girl that disobeys or tries to escape.
Sucker Punch banner poster
To escape the brothel Baby Doll eventually learns she must find certain objects throughout the club to aid in the dancers’ escape. A map, fire, a butcher’s knife; each item is controlled by someone at the brothel. The map is in Blue’s office; the lighter is in a customer’s coat pocket and so on. To obtain each item Baby Doll must first lure them into a seductive trance with one of “special” stripteases, hypnotizing them with her beauty and giving one of the other dancers an opportunity to steal the treasure. Her dancing must be pretty impressive, because her gyrations charm her mark every time. For some reason Snyder refuses to allow the audience the pleasure of viewing one of these dances, purposefully cutting away as soon as Baby Doll begins to move her body. Snyder’s perception of what is empowering and what is exploitive is immediate and apparent. Nevertheless, while her mark is in a deep trance of desire, Baby Doll and her mates are then whisked away into a third dream world. That’s right, a dream within a dream. Sound familiar? In this third reality Baby Doll meets the Wise Man, her sensei of sorts who entrusts her with the weapons needed to survive in this never-never land. Played by the typically solid Scott Glen, the Wise Man is a laughable mix of Mr. Miyagi and David Carradine in Kung-Fu (1972), another silly addition to the film that probably sounded really cool at the time.
Sucker Puncher samurai giants
Although the items that the girls need to escape are all found somewhere in the brothel, they must join Baby Doll in the third dream world and find the items there as well. This is where Sucker Punch earns its admission price, willingly sacrificing reasonability for balls to the wall insanity. The map that was once hanging in Blue’s office that detailed the brothel’s floor plan is now the layout of German trenches in an alternate World War I reality. Employing giant robotic mechs to defend against a blitzkrieg of undead German soldiers, the fantastical setting is decked out in steampunk machinations. Snyder spared no expense in these beautiful fleets of fancy, with each item presenting a new, specifically themed adventure.
Sucker Punch banner poster
As exciting as shooting down a giant Zeppelin with a mechanized robot, or destroying a fire-breathing dragon with a samurai sword may be, it is difficult to achieve any emotional connection with the women in Sucker Punch. Their plight is non-existent when you realize both the heightened fantasy worlds and the brothel do not actually exist. It is all in Baby Doll’s pretty little head, a head that is about have long piece of metal jammed through it with a hammer. There are no stakes in the film, which means no concern, no build up. To effectively create a convincing narrative it is essential the film offer at least one person for the audience to care about. By having a vulnerable protagonist the audience becomes connected with his or her experiences throughout the picture, and eventually becomes invested in what is actually taking place on screen. The only thing the audience knows about Baby Doll before the lobotomy and her ensuing trip into la-la-stripperland is that she accidently shot her sister. By the time Baby Doll reaches the dreamworld the audience has more insight into Blue and the one-dimensional stepfather character than the film’s protagonist. When Rocket sacrifices herself so the other girls can escape a runaway train it is of no concern because even though she dies in the fantasy world, and then also dies in the brothel, Rocket as a person only ever existed in Baby Doll’s mind to begin with, thus negating any emotional response one might have.
Scott Glen in Sucker Punch
The prostitution, stripteases, and risqué outfits would all be more than ok if it wasn’t for how young some of the girls are made up to look. While actresses Abbie Cornish (28 years old) and Jena Malone (26 years old) look like adult women, Vanessa Hudgen’s (22 years old) Blondie, Jamie Chung’s (28 years old) Amber and especially Browning’s (22 years old) Baby Doll not only look as if they were underage but that their younger appearance was deliberate. In a film about ass kicking strippers some luridness is to be expected and welcomed with open arms, but when you put a catholic school girl outfit on a girl who looks about old enough to legitimately wear a catholic school girl outfit then that is where sexiness becomes uncomfortable, purposeful or otherwise.
Watching Sucker Punch feels like you are trapped in the mind of a pubescent teenage boy who fell asleep watching porn and playing Legend of Zelda on his Nintendo 3DS. Obviously unaware of the difference between titillation and temperance, Snyder’s misogynistic compulsions are so flagrant in this film it is hard to get angry with him; surely this blatant miscalculation of “girl-power” could have only been written by a man. Not unlike Lara Croft, who has been a video game staple for the last 15-years because of her laughably large chest and ability to brawl, gender roles are still easily confused within the action genre, often presuming sexual and violent exploits are by definition always empowering for women. Last year’s Kick-Ass was met with similar criticism for its portrayal of 11 year old Mindy Macready and her crime fighting alter-ego “Hit Girl.” The film portrays the pre-teen gleefully decapitating criminals and thugs, while spewing obscenities so vulgar it would cause the woman that currently holds the gangbang record to blush. Marketed as an empowering role model for young girls across the world, Hit Girl became the billboard for girl power, and the argument of what was reasonable and what was irresponsible continued. One-year later Baby Doll zips up her thigh-highs and grabs her samurai sword to spill more blood, except instead of battling crime in the streets of metropolitan America, she and her buxom sidekicks duke it out in a world of Swords & Stilettos inside Baby Doll’s brain. Of course the ridiculousness of this fleeting figment is undeniable. What teenage girl would manifest a dream world that requires her to sneak around a seedy brothel, scantily clad and forced to sacrifice her body for the sexual urges of her crude customers? A teenage girl envisioned by man, that’s who.
World War I steampunk zombieAs Baby Doll travels into her deeper dream worlds, the amount of clothing her and the other girls wear becomes less and less. Beginning with white patient outfits in the asylum, it is to be believed that Baby Doll would envision herself and the others wearing dominatrix style costumes in the brothel, and unbelievably even less clothing the in the fantasy realm. Snyder may have been trying to portray a group of women fighting against sexual oppression, but by progressively removing their clothing and exploiting their bodies he only serves to subvert his initial goal. The danger is evident, the oppression is unfortunate, and the sexual mistreatment is disgusting, but this is made all the more worse when confronted with the thought that Baby Doll is manifesting it all. In her reality it can be assumed her and her sister are both sexually mistreated, in the brothel her and her friends are sexually mistreated, beaten, and often times killed. Should it be some sort of relief when in the fantasy world the girls are just attacked by zombie Germans and blown-up by bombs? The idea that the brothel serves as visual metaphor for her reality is straightforward and clear, but what is incomprehensible is how any of the sexual abuse endured in the club or the physical harm of the fantasy world is in anyway a representation of that struggle. Snyder’s presumption is disturbing, only proving that the female voice is not only profoundly void in Hollywood at present time, but also completely misunderstood in today’s popular culture.
Sucker Punch poster
Sucker Punch has released at an interesting time in Hollywood. In a year of multiple graphic novel and comic book adaptations, a focus on 3-D and computer-animated spectacle, and way too many sequels to count (this Fall’s Puss n’ Boots is Dreamwork’s fifth entry into their Shrek franchise!), Snyder and Warner Bros. should be commended for taking a chance on a new intellectual property. Touting babes, guns, and monsters, with an interesting aesthetic and Snyder’s unique visual style, its less-than-stellar performance at the box office should all but guarantee big studios like Warner Bros will think twice before releasing a big tent-pole blockbuster that doesn’t have a number following the title. Was it audience interest, or their perception, that left Sucker Punch dead in the water? Domestic viewers have proved time and time again they are not interested in hyper stylized, high concept, exploitive fare. Films like the Quentin Tarantino, Robert Rodriguez 1970s throwback Grindhouse (2007) failed to earn back even half of its production budget domestically, despite the clever gimmick and the Weinstein powered marketing push. Snakes on a Plane (2006), The Wolfman (2010), and even Drive Angry 3D, the 2011 Nic Cage vehicle (uh thank you) that had the master of over acting playing an escapee from Hell trying to rescue his granddaughter in a muscle car, were all financial let downs despite their high budgets and an original premise. In 2009 director Zack Snyder and Warner Bros found out the hard way that even adapting a film from a beloved source does not guarantee success in the box office. His adaptation of the Watchmen graphic novel, written by Alan Moore in 1986, was proof that ambition must be matched with skill. Listed as one of Time magazine’s 100 greatest novels of the 20th Century, the Watchmen book was considered un-filmable, with a plot and cast of characters so deliberately designed the less perceptive could easily misread it as convoluted. Although it could be said Snyder held too close to the source material, Watchmen was ultimately an interesting film that could not support the weight of its own narrative. While fanboy obsession and geek culture, and how they pertain and influence Hollywood trends, are evident in all of Snyder’s films, Sucker Punch still caters to his nerdy fan base, once again letting narrative coherency take a back seat to artificial artistry and clever genre mash-ups. Like Watchmen and 300 (2007) before it, Snyder’s focus on visual panache and digitally generated spectacle is almost always fun, but rarely interesting. The surprise box office success of 300 only served to secure this idea of pageantry over substance, however that time it was the chiseled bodies of the Spartan warriors that were being exploited. Typically violent and beautifully rendered, Snyder’s films are an achievement in exhibition. They are not unlike having sex with a genie that can only grant orgasms. Every scene offers at least one visual climax, with something cool, albeit computer generated and hollow, kicking ass and looking sexy in slow motion. Imagine orgasm after orgasm with no foreplay, no buildup? Films like 300 and Sucker Punch do not concern themselves with turning their audience on, delicately making sure the viewer is ready and prepared. Instead Snyder wastes no time jamming his over stylized, sexually pre-occupied images deep inside the eye sockets of anyone holding a ticket, brutally forcing himself inside their tender psyches.
Baby Doll / Emily Browning in Sucker Punch
But as long as it feels good loyal audience members should willingly come back for more. In the case of Sucker Punch, Snyder fails as a storyteller, but continues to amaze as a filmmaker. While steampunk zombies, giant flying dragons, and runaway trains are captivating, Snyder’s inability to deny his own id is too distracting for the viewer to completely commit. This film is a perfect example of just how much can go wrong when a director’s budget is as extravagant as his imagination. With no boundaries an artist is unchained, free to follow every silly whim to its ridiculous completion. Sucker Punch proves director’s cannot be unrestricted, that self-governing is impossible when there are no tethers.
The ladies of Sucker Punch are underwritten and over emphasized; perhaps they are actually convinced their characters are speaking against sexism and gender roles in today’s geek infested cinema instead of simply playing into them. Either way this film is an unmistakable and unfortunate failure, a film about women that has no heart and all balls.
(#124. Watchman, #125. 300, & #126. Dawn of the Dead)
Friday, May 6, 2011 at 11:35AM 
Saying you “like” or “dislike” a film like Clean, Shaven (1993) really doesn’t matter, at least in the “thumbs-up” RottenTomatoes idea of like or dislike. This is not a film that wants to entertain; in fact, director Lodge Kerrigan might be a little disturbed if he caught you gleefully smiling during a screening. No, Clean, Shaven, is not fun. I cannot even say it is entertaining, at least not in the traditional sense of the word. The film would be hard to recommend to anyone that doesn’t enjoy boundary pushing avant-garde cinema. Or has a weak stomach. Or a weak mind. Or is easily bored.
For those of you that are still here, Clean, Shaven is a deeply despondent film that wears its low-budget indie heart on its sleeve. Not so much concerned with polish and grace, Kerrigan instead is hell-bent on convincingly portraying the impossible: Schizophrenia. Told in sporadic jolts of narrative seizures, Clean, Shaven excellently walks the fine line of coherent storytelling and bewildering machinations. The movie is about Peter Winter (Peter Greene), a schizophrenic who was just released from, or perhaps escaped, a mental institution with the goal of finding his young daughter who was just put up for adoption by his mother. Constantly battling a rage of paranoid and delusional impulses, Winter must exhaustively contend with his own ruptured psyche, forced to appease a cruel and twisted warden that has taken control of his mind. Believing there is a radio transmitter underneath his fingernail sending signals to his brain, Kerrigan doesn’t shy away from showing the extent to which Winter will go to appease the voices in his head.
Winter is the quintessential unreliable narrator, and Kerrigan takes advantage of his medium’s strengths to craft a story that is confounding without ever being overwhelming. The film’s sound design is done so well insanity seems understandable. With voices coming out of the radio, hisses from power lines, laughter from out of the darkness, it easy to sympathize with Winter’s plight. However Kerrigan’s editing and sound design at times come off as being overly produced. Concerned with presenting a believable reality inside the head of a mad man, some of the more spasmodically edited sequences are more distracting than persuading. His effort is as obvious as his intention.
Peter Greene as Winter gives a career defining performance here. His energy and dedication matches that of the director, and his portrayal is delicate and impossibly convincing, respectably avoiding what could have been an insulting aping of stereotypical twitches and eccentricities.
This is not a film for everyone, and perhaps more to the point it is a film for a very few. Following in the footsteps of the seminal Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986) and paving the way for future experimental films like Lars Von Trier’s Anti-Christ (2009) and Giorgos Lanthimos’ excellent Dogtooth (2010). Horrifyingly conceived with a superb performance by Peter Greene, Clean, Shaven offers a specific type variety of cinematic experience that few will enjoy, but all should appreciate.
Friday, May 6, 2011 at 11:24AM 
One of the most critically acclaimed adaptations of any Shakespearean tragedy, director Akira Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood ironically dispenses with the play’s poetic dialogue and Scottish setting and instead converts the language and design into something wholly Japanese. Unmistakably stylized after Japanese Noh Theater, Kurosawa infuses ancient Asian aesthetics to create modern cinematic brilliance. Itself a somewhat forgotten art even in its native Japan, Noh was infused with an ethereal eeriness, typically preoccupied with ghosts and spirits and often taking place within a dream. According to critic Keiko McDonald one way of classifying Noh drama is by the level of reality in a given play. “In genzai, or ‘contemporary’ Noh, only the tangible, ‘real’ world is presented. In mugen, or ‘phantasmal’ Noh, reality is more complex: it is a blend of natural and supernatural planes of experience.” (36, McDonald) Kurosawa, obviously inspired by mugen when crafting Throne of Blood, injects many of the basic elements of Noh theatricality into his film. Stylistically and structurally, Throne of Blood is a love letter to what Kurosawa called “…the real heart, the core of all Japanese drama.”(117, Richie) This paper will attempt an investigation into that Noh tradition, examining how ancient Japanese histrionics could inspire an adaptation that so effectively removes itself from the source material.
Noh plays were customarily modeled around a basic three-act structure: jo, ha, and kyu. Not unlike Aristotelian plot structure, Noh act structure is surprisingly rudimentary. The jo is the introduction and set-up of the story and characters, ha has inciting complications and action, while the kyu resolves any dramatic action. Author James Goodwin explains, “In relation to the full dramatic action of Throne of Blood, the introductory chant constitutes its jo, dramatic events from Tsuzuki’s opening war council to the report of Cobweb Forests movement constitute its ha, and the betrayal of Taketoki Washizu (Toshiro Mifune) by his men and the closing chant, its kyu.” (187, Goodwin) Examining the film at a more micro level it is possible to see that sequences are constructed with jo, ha, and kyu in mind. Goodwin expounds on this theory, using Washizu and Miki’s horrific encounter with the witch in Spiderweb Forest as an example. The scene begins with the two samurai warriors attempting to navigate their way through the labyrinthine forest, the increasing fog obscuring the path. According to Goodwin the witch’s ghostly chants restates the film’s jo, however the protagonist’s composure is broken with her revelations of the future. “The sudden disappearance of both the spinner and her hut brings kyu, which is completed by the ride of Washizu and Miki through blinding fogs and their pause before returning to Forest Castle.” (186)
Aesthetically Throne of Blood borrows much of its look and sound from Noh. Kurosawa draws on traditional Noh music and tonal concepts to further enhance the film’s more moody and ritualistic elements, with a greater goal of refashioning the Scottish play with Japanese culture. The strident Noh pipe and rhythmic pounding of wooden staffs effectively contorts the opening credit sequence into a hypnotic seduction, preparing the viewer for the nightmarish enchantress patiently awaiting their arrival. In his comparison between the original Macbeth play and Kurosawa’s filmic translation, Maurice Hindle examined Throne of Blood’s opening moments, keeping Noh influences in mind. The movie begins and ends with footage of crumbling Japanese castles, former symbols of man’s greater ambition and indulgence. While the camera scans the eroding buildings a “chorus of deep, droning male voices” (101, Hindle) rumbles off screen. Hindle explains, “As we are shown a bleak and misty landscape containing only a wooden monolith memorializing the site of the once ‘mighty fortress’ of ‘Spiderweb Castle’, the sternly chanting chorus tells us (in translation) that this is the story of a ‘proud warrior’ who was ‘murdered by ambition’. Yet his spirit is ‘walking still’, for ‘what once was so now still is true’.” (101, Hindle) Wearing his love of Noh on his sleeve, Kurosawa contorts audience expectations by successfully manipulating his country’s antiquated artistry. “What could therefore be construed as a ghost story at one level supplies a chilling moral conveyed in the style of a [Noh] sung epic tale taking us back to earlier times.” (101, Hindle)
Simplicity was a major component of Noh music, and so to in Throne of Blood. Much of the film is enveloped in silence, with either natural diegetic sound or typical Noh-music – flute, drums, and chants – breaking up the aural void. “The ideal Noh performance offers the audience a profound theatric experience of ritual dance, song, chant, and poetry.” (90, Huang & Ross) No other scene may better personify this Noh musical influence better than when Washizu murders his lord. Lasting six minutes, the audience must endure Washizu’s downfall with a terrible silence permeating the majority of the scene. The quietness is briefly punctured by non-verbal sounds and music, but as with traditional Noh the scene’s mood is expertly manipulated by tonal cues. Washizu’s heavy breathing pounds harder than his heartbeat, adeptly denoting every thought going through his mind without having to speak a word. The film’s Lady Macbeth, Lady Asaji Washizu (Isuzu Yamada), contrasts perfectly against the murdering warlord, both visually and aurally. As her husband stoically puffs nerve into his lungs, she effortlessly scurries around the set, her scampers gleefully matched by the swishing of her kimono. “Soon the gentle and feminine sound of silk is transformed into the creeping and threatening glide of a vicious snake. (91, Huang & Ross) The sounds of her dress slice into the silence, symbolizing Asaji’s antagonistic motivations. Later, after their treachery has been discovered, both Washizu and his wife have moments of contemplation awaiting their inevitable doom. “Sitting on the floor, she waits noiselessly. The silence that symbolizes Washizu’s fear and resistance in the earlier scene accompanies her, until the haunting solitary flute recurs.” (92, Hsiung) Kurosawa plays with Noh music and silence until the very end, when Washizu falls by the hands of his own men. This time the director mixes the shallow hisses of arrows and the ominous ringing of a gong with the silence of death to accompany Washizu’s final seconds.
While Throne of Blood’s score and sound may have helped to create the film’s haunting atmosphere, what is seen on screen is most obviously influenced by Noh. For Japanese audiences, this correlation between the film’s opening scene and Noh Theater would not be lost. Not only does the scene where Washizu and Miki first encounter the witch with her spinning wheel invoke the simple aesthetical choices associated with Noh, but in fact it is actually reminiscent of a Noh play, Kurozuka (Black Mound). McDonald explains, “ In this play, a party of wandering monks encounters an old woman sitting at a spinning wheel. She sings how fleeting this world is and how sinful human beings are… after the monks have asked to be given shelter… they see the phantasmal world. The old hag reveals her true identity; she is a demon.” (37, McDonald) Kurozuka is not the only Noh play to be directly alluded to in Throne of Blood. The witch’s make-up is made up to resemble the Noh mask of the “mountain witch” used in the play Yamauba. McDonald further elucidates, explaining both witches have supernatural abilities that allow them to see into the future.
More so than any other feature, Kurosawa took advantage of Noh’s specific acting style when directing his performers. In an interview discussing Throne of Blood the director once said, “I wanted to use the way that Noh actors have of moving their bodies, the way they have of walking, and the general composition which the Noh stage provides.” (117, Richie) With Noh came a restriction for movement, a limitation that interested Kurosawa, particularly for Asaji. Washizu’s wife is purposefully modeled to parallel the witch in Spiderweb Forest, moving as if possessed by an evil spirit throughout most of the picture. “She is the most limited, the most confined, the most driven, the most evil. She moves heel to toe, as does the Noh actor; the shape of Isuzu Yamada’s face is used to suggest the Noh mask; her scenes with her husband have a very Noh-like composition, and her hand washing is pure Noh drama.” (139, Richie) The witch, with her Yamauba inspired mask, is also heavily shaped around Noh elements. When she is busy prognosticating Washizu’s demise, the actress delivers her omen in a guttural voice consistent with Noh performances. Hindle offers the most convincing connection between Noh influences in Throne of Blood and Shakespeare’s play: “In Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Lady Macbeth’s speeches in 1.5 align her with the malevolent supernatural realm of the witches. Kurosawa creates a similar alignment by providing strong visual identifications between the Forest Witch and Asaji… Asaji’s calmly seated posture, her position in the right of the frame, and the boldly lit harsh whiteface make-up aimed at recreating the look of a Noh mask, are all strongly reminiscent of the Forest Witch’s presentation.” (104) Unable to work within the linguistically confined spaces of Shakespeare’s speech, Kurosawa deftly took advantage of his medium, establishing visual indications to unconsciously connect both Asaji and the Forest Witch.
While Noh may not be as highly regarded today as it was during its heyday in the 14th Century, Throne of Blood proves the Japanese tradition fits comfortably on screen. Benefiting from over 600-years of theatrical and cultural conventions, director Akira Kurosawa fashioned one of the most famous tragedies ever written comfortably into Japanese folklore. Director Grigori Kozintsev, a Russian filmmaker who has adapted several of Shakespeare’s plays including Hamlet and King Lear said it best when discussing Kurosawa’s success with Throne of Blood, “Kurosawa’s visual poetry derives from a design of delivering the story and inner life of Shakespeare’s drama in a structure of images whose meaning and effects draw on a highly formalistic non-Western dramatic tradition (Noh Theater)… that is as arguably rich in cultural signification and resonance as the verbal text of the Shakespearean original.” (107, Hindle) Imbuing every frame, every musical note, every movement by his actors with Noh aesthetics, Kurosawa enhanced Throne of Blood above common adaptation and into the cinematic Pantheon.
If you made it through the whole essay please link the page and pass it around! Let me know what you think o of the film, Kurosawa, or Japanese film in general in the comments section.
Work Cited
McDonald, Keiko. “Noh Into Film: Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood.” Journal of Film and
Video, 39.1 (1987): 36-41. Print
Goodwin, James. Akira Kurosawa and Intertextual Cinema. Baltimore: The Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1994. Print
Richie, Donald. The Films of Akira Kurosawa. Los Angeles: University of California
Press, 1984. Print.
Hindle, Maurice. Studying Shakespeare on Film. Houndmills, Basingstoke [England:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. Print.
Huang, Alexander C. Y., and Charles Stanley. Ross. Shakespeare in Hollywood, Asia,
and Cyberspace. West Lafayette, IN: Purdue UP, 2009. Print.
