Finally made it to the Kurosawa yesterday - Gill allowed me the evening off (funny, I always think of my “free time” as being my London trips, and Gill gets as many evenings as she wants in return, but it made a really nice change going out in Sheffield by myself. We must get a babysitter so we can do it together next time - although Gill can’t stand Kurosawa, so it’ll have to be something more mainstream).
Stayed on for both of the night’s showings - firstly Throne of Blood, Kurosawa’s adaptation of MacBeth. I’m not too familiar with the original, though have a vague idea of the story, so knew pretty much where it was going. My leg’s got a bit twitchy towards the end - I wasn’t 100% engrossed - but it was an awesome film nontheless. It’s a shame that it was so crackly - about 90% of the film seems to consist of long, meaningful silences, but during these I could hardly hear myself think for the fizzes and pops coming from the screen. Most impressive part was the samurai clobber - I was in the British museum the other day checking this stuff out (could have stayed there for hours, had not my mobile phone rung & I been ejected unceremoniously from the galleries), the lacquered (sp?) armour and other items are incredible - like space-age 70s ornaments, but made centuries before. The various clan symbols - Washizu’s centipede and Miki’s rabbit, the little designs repeated on their fabrics, the flags strapped to retainers backs, flapping away in the perpetual wind to create a haunting susurrus, I want flags strapped to my back! Throughout the film, the sounds (and lack of them) were one of the strongest parts - although there were so many strongest parts (the darkness of Mount Fuji’s volcanic ash, the fog and the wind, the trees’ branches tangling across your view… the realisation of MacBeth as a Noh play, and the incredible stylized performances of Toshirô Mifune (as Taketori Washizu - the MacBeth character) and Isuzu Yamada (as Asaji, his Lady MacBeth) are incredible. Check out Michael Coy’s review at IMDB for a much better description than I could give.
The second film was Yojimbo, which as more of a Western-style action movie (you can easily see the temptation for Leone et al in remaking Kurosawa’s films in the West - there is something in the remoteness of the rural villages, the banditry and lawlessness, the ronin figure, which ties up beautifully… but the samurais had better costumes) was easier to sit through for 2 hours without getting twitchy. I had seen half of the film before (yeah, it was a Sunday afternoon… I fell asleep, I’m sorry - nothing to do with the quality of the film) but wanted to see the rest, and wanted to see it on a bigger screen (which reminds me… somthing I’ve thought about lots lately, and was debating with Gill’s mum and sister - where do you sit in the cinema? I never used to think anything of it until I started going with Gill, and she never took her glasses so we always ended up near the front. Now I find it hard to sit anywhere else - it’s so great having the action fill your entire view. June and Cath argue that you have to sit near the back, otherwise you can’t see everything on the screen, but I don’t think that’s the point - did the director even intend you to see everything on the screen? The action is usually central, or at least in one place, and by sitting close-up you can truly immerse yourself in it. Sit and the back and you may as well be watching on TV). Enough of that… where was I, oh yeah, the film… well, what can I say except for a bunch of wasted superlatives. The ultimate ronin movie (which is interesting, in light of what we are doing with Bradonpace). Mifune is awesome again as the samurai, surely teaching Clint everything he knew (right down to the chewed matchstick). There’s even a thug character in Ushi-Tore’s gang who looks just like Richard Kiel as Jaws :-). Some of my favourite scenes are the shots lingering on the samurai’s expression, totally confident, chuckling inside at the chaos he is wreaking and the fun he is having. But… every detail of the film is enchanting. Wonderful.
There was a rainbow outside our back window on Friday!
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