kurosawakira

I'm going back to see every Teshigahara I can. I've loved him for a long time, but only recently revisited "Rikyu" (1989) and "Gô-hime" (1992), his last film. And, truth be told, I don't think cinema can get much better than this.

I think it really helps if you love Japanese green tea, and if you're into preparing it yourself. There's a sense of fragile timelessness as one measures the correct volume of water in the right temperature, preheats the teapot and other utensils, and applies the right amount of tea leaves. There's a wonderful, relaxing effect in preparing gyokuro in a shiboridashi, or fukamushi in a kyusu, seeing the leaves unfold. Let alone preparing and drinking matcha out of a chawan.

All of this, in my mind, is present in these two films. The sense of taking one's time, using only a few words instead of many, applying only little color instead of abundance. This is not easy to do, and I think Teshigahara's reputation as an avant-gardist does him wrong. He was, and through his cinema remains, a Rikyu of our time, not only in ikebana but also in cinema.

Not that these two films are the same. This follows "Rikyu" immediately, but it takes some time to adjust to its more energetic and immediate characters, and the change in Toyotomi, since in this film he's played not by Yamazaki but by Oida Katsuhiro. It's the most difficult difference to adjust to, not because of any flaw in Oida but due to Yamazaki's sheer perfection. Oida's Katsuhiro ascends from the heights of a Lear to a perceivably less frightening a majesty. I can't help but miss Yamazaki every time Toyotomi's on screen, although he disappears form the movie very early on.

But there's Nakadai Tatsuya, in his beauty unrivaled, save for the occasional Alain Delons of the world, and in his eloquence of characterization second to none in the realm of world cinema. Here he doesn't have that much to do which could be surmised from the title of the film. The rest of the players are the pillars that carry the princess's throne.

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player / That struts and frets his hour upon the stage / And then is heard no more. It is a tale / Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury / Signifying nothing. ("Macbeth" 5.5.23–27)

"Macbeth" is a beautiful, unforgettable and disturbing phantasmagoria, so I think we're blessed that three master directors (Kurosawa, Polanski, Welles) have tackled perhaps not the subject, per se, but rather the mood of the thing.

It might the old age catching up on me, but I've become increasingly lax concerning adaptations. That might be one reason why I rarely get that much from big productions, because they can't afford (ironic, isn't it?) to deviate or boldly reimagine. Of course there are exceptions, but as a rule of thumb it's so generally elusive that it might take us someplace. Shakespeare, then, is a very fine place for intuitive and explorative filmmaking, mainly because "doing Shakespeare" has become rather synonymous with the idea of "doing Shakespeare differently from anybody else." Which is fine by me: some works I'll like, others don't, and be it either way, none comes out crying.

What I'm looking for in a Macbeth adaptation is, as I've already stated it, the possibilities with which one may play with the mood and atmosphere of the film.

The film looks very good considering the circumstances, and what ruggedness there is only enhances the unpolished, deformed terror the film exudes, and what unevenness there is in terms of picture or sound quality gives the film a kind of Vampyresque dream layer, and it's not likely to be bested before either Guy Maddin or the Brothers Quay tackle the subject. And keeping in mind that many scholars consider Macbeth to be a heavily edited text that has survived to us, it all accommodates this illusion of a hellish story, surviving us in fragments as if through the furnace from generation to generation.

This is indeed a dark, despairing film, and as such phenomenally successful. The beginning is a mélange worthy of "The Hearts of Age" (1934) and the best editing he's done in "F for Fake" (1973), All this power in that little transitory moment where the witches' dark magick takes over. And while I really love "The Tragedy of Othello: The Moor of Venice" (1952), but I think this is equally as perfect. Some favourite moments: the witches and their Golem-like voodoo creature in antithesis with the cross-bearing, power-lusty priests; and the way Macbeth's prancing about like Ivan in Eisenstein's epic when he's lost it, just before that having seen himself as in a glass darkly, distorted. Perhaps that would be the one visual motif from the film and for the film, the moment he sees himself contorted and strikes the mirror, and himself. And, in the end, when things fall apart, what a fall.

The darkness overpowers. There seems to be no existence for things outside the frame, or rather outside that which is seen. Claustrophobia. And it works so well. Polanski, in his "Macbeth" (1972), does everything so differently. Instead of claustrophobic darkness, he shoots with grand Welsh and Scottish vistas of natural fog on stone that immediately transports us to an age of violence. I wonder whether the production team of "Game of Thrones" ever took notice of this, or rather, how much. The effect is, in contrast to Welles' method, imposing and equally phobic: there are many immense moments of claustrophobia, but primarily it's agoraphobia, if we can use it in this context to describe the lack of control one has in such wide, open spaces, hostile beyond description. Murderous, satanic.

I find it interesting that Kurosawa's bleakest film wasn't his Macbeth, which we made rather early in his career, but his King Lear, which is the film that in bleakness matches this and Polanski's version.

"Heroic Purgatory" (1970) was my first Yoshida, and I'll certainly try to see more than the three films released by Arrow in the "Love + Anarchism" set.

It's definitely avant-garde in the classic sense of the term, marching in the vanguard of utilizing fluid experimental dream language. I know I'll eventually revisit Godard and the French New Wave in the future, whose work at this writing I'd consider dull and uninteresting, but this is the exact opposite of dull: not only is it visually masterful, the story, no matter how evasive and at times elliptical like an afterthought, is actually interesting.

I definitely see, based on this one film, how Yoshida might have influenced Wong, or even Malick's "modern style" from "The Tree of Life" (2011) onwards. And if not, having seen this one really does add to the aforementioned directors' films.

I'm not sure whether the experience would lend itself for a repeat viewing anytime soon, since because of the elliptical nature of the film, despite the complete mastery of the visuals, and Yoshida is clearly a master at work, the film is purposefully obscure. But if one approaches it like a dream, it's a wonderful audiovisual journey through some very unusual ways to see the world.

It's fun to know really nothing at all about Yoshida, other than him starting out under Kinoshita's tutelage. It strongly resembles the Ozu-Imamura relationship, where the "old", strict formalism (or what would certainly seem as such by the new generation of filmmakers) in its part has influenced the radical swerves of the apprentices. I'd really like to know what he thought of Teshigahara.