Quartile rating: 8/10 · 1 rating
Returning to their lord's castle, samurai warriors Washizu and Miki are waylaid by a spirit who predicts their futures. When the first part of the spirit's prophecy comes true, Washizu's scheming wife, Asaji, presses him to speed up the rest of the spirit's prophecy by murdering his lord and usurping his place. Director Akira Kurosawa's resetting of William Shakespeare's "Macbeth" in feudal Japan is one of his most acclaimed films.
Kurosawa's transposition of Macbeth into feudal Japan is one of cinema's great adaptive achievements. The fog-drenched forest sequences and the haunting spirit encounter are visually stunning, with Roger Ebert-tier cinematography that draws heavily from Noh theatre aesthetics. Toshiro Mifune and Isuzu Yamada deliver towering performances — Yamada's Lady Asaji is genuinely chilling in her stillness. The Noh-influenced staging gives the film a completely singular tone found nowhere else in cinema. The ending arrow sequence is iconic but the final act loses some of the inexorable tragic momentum built earlier, preventing a top Ending score. Still one of the most distinctive Shakespeare adaptations ever committed to film.