Shakespeare's classic tragedy Macbeth has been remade 26 times, and Spider's Nest, directed by Akira Kurosawa, is one of the few masterpieces of adaptation. The Japanese film emperor interpreted the 17th-century Scottish legend into an oriental fatalistic lament about human nature, and he carried forward the stylized and localized elements of "Noh Drama", making "Spider's Nest City" have the artistic charm of the original.
Today, on the 60th anniversary of the release of "Spider's Nest City", let us once again walk into the foggy fortress and relive this "Game of Thrones" dominated by desire, written by blood, and interpreted by swords.
A more "depressing" adaptation than Shakespeare's original
As one of Shakespeare's four great tragedies, Macbeth was introduced to Japan as early as the Meiji Restoration, and was banned during World War II. Akira Kurosawa, who was heavily influenced by Western literature, has always wanted to adapt it into a movie. In his view, the current Japanese "era drama" has long been reduced to a romance costume film, no pattern, no courage, and the performance technique is extremely poor, except for masters such as Kenji Mizoguchi and Masaki Kobayashi, who have few good works.
Orson Wells' Macbeth
He had intended to launch Spider's Nest City after 1950's Rashomon, but after learning that Orson Wells had already written and directed a self-produced Macbeth in 1948, he had to put the adaptation on hold. In addition to his love for this literary masterpiece, Akira Kurosawa wants to extract the cautionary meaning of the original "Macbeth" to express his sentimental nostalgia for history, home country, and human nature. And the original human original sin of becoming a king and defeating a king, deceiving me, and not having a poison or a husband is exactly the ideological theme he wants to convey in the historical theme.
Audiences familiar with the original book will find that "Spider's Nest City" faithfully reproduces Shakespeare's original work - the inflated ambition, the abyss of desire, the fateful arrangement, the ugliness of human nature. "Spider's Nest City" is not inferior to the original in the excavation of ideological depth, and even more "depressing" than the original work.
However, the biggest difference between the two is that Kurosawa has done a minimalist and closed treatment in the visual style and character development of "Spider's Nest City" - his "Macbeth" Vulture Ishishi is not powerful, or he is obsessed from the beginning, losing again and again in the process of fighting his conscience, and finally falling into the abyss of desire and doom.
Asagusa played by Isuzu Yamada
In stark contrast to Hatsuzu's weakness and hesitation, Kenuchisuke Asagusa (Isuzu Yamada) is fierce and decisive, who entrusts her fate to the witch's prophecy and tricks her husband into eradicating dissidents. The main characters have no complex emotional reversals, and there is no hope of self-redemption. Just as the totem on the hatsutsu flag is a carnivorous centipede, and Miki's banner is a cute rabbit, from the moment they appear, they decide "whose hand the rabbit dies".
It can be said that Akira Kurosawa reduced all the characters in "Spider's Nest City" to a distinct symbol of human nature, and did not allow the existence of personalitized characters at all, and everything was strict right and wrong. Even zooming in to the whole story, they are like ghosts repeating what they did before they were alive, the fate has long been determined, everything is providence, everything is fate, no one can escape... The unique limitations of this "Noh" art, that is, the enclosed space, the facial characters, and the stylized character actions, these "Noh drama" elements that make Kurosawa understand the magic, are the key to the unique image temperament of this film.
Grounded: Traditional Noh Drama "Soul Possession"
"Noh drama" is the most important traditional drama in Japan, and for Akira Kurosawa, the elements of Noh drama are the key to the localization of "Spider's Nest Castle".
First of all, from the actor's makeup, Isuma Yamada played by Asaka is coated with thick fat powder, looking lifeless and expressionless, coupled with two embellishments on the forehead, the traditional medium distribution type, asaka face shape is like the "female face" in the noh noodles. And Asakusa's action design is also full of ritualization of Noh drama performance, she often uses the basic skill of Noh drama in the film - "wiping the ground", the pace is precise and careful, and the kneeling posture of the expressionless body leaning forward is also the standard of noh drama.
Isuzu Yamada's makeup is scary when put into horror movies
In addition, the screams of Asagiri, the sound of kimonos being pulled up, the slight clicking of the witch's spinning wheel, and the rustling of the reed hut are all characteristics of noh drama. As the protagonist of Mifune, his "space step" of stepping on the drum and regressing, the action shape of drawing a knife and slashing, and the body movement of dancing when hitting an arrow all reflect the high degree of stylization of noh drama performance. When Akira Kurosawa was filming, he also used long shots + drumming pipe accompaniment to enhance the sense of immediate vision of noh drama.
In noh drama, the way to show the mood and sorrow of the characters is to wear noh faces, and the 450 kinds of noh faces capture almost all the emotions known to humans. In "Spider's Nest City", the expression of the character's emotions is also straightforward, the character seems to wear a noh face, and the joys and sorrows are all written on the face. This kind of "too strong" performance method is also an emphasis on the externalization of the character's emotions on the noh face, and it can even be said that Kurosawa almost "faces" the movie character with the noh face.
In the design of the film's lines, "Spider's Nest City" to a certain extent replaces the poetic lines in the original "Macbeth" with the lines of "Noh Drama Body", and at the same time changes the traditional "five-seven rhymes" in Japanese poetry to contemporary non-rhyme. For example, the witch's "fixed scene poem" in "Spider's Nest City" - "The king is not seen, life is like a sunrise, supported in the world, life is as short as an ephemera, but seek suffering from yourself." As well as the opening chapter that sets the tone and theme of the whole film - "The city of delusion is still there, the soul is still in it, obsessed with the path of shura, the same in the past and the present" are full of the flavor of noh drama lines.
The witch appeared in the forest, reciting poems
It can be said that Akira Kurosawa has injected elements of noh drama into every sound and painting detail of "Spider's Nest City", coupled with the exquisite costume restoration to the extreme, which makes "Spider's Nest City" with a national and localized image temperament that is thousands of miles away from "Macbeth", and it is also an important reason why this film has become one of the few Shakespeare adaptation masterpieces.
Personalization: The unique imprint of the movie emperor
In addition to the localization of the adaptation thinking, another important reason why "Spider's Nest City" has become a masterpiece of adaptation is that it is deeply imprinted with Akira Kurosawa's distinctive personal style. One of them is Kurosawa's signature "Scene Scheduling Dafa".
First of all, from the perspective of actor scheduling, Akira Kurosawa, who was deeply influenced by Noh, almost formed his own "routine". In almost all Kurosawa films, the actor's movement follows an axis to externalize the emotions of the characters, pacing left and right when nervous, sitting up when angry, and squatting down when sad, these key emotions are also shown in "Spider's Nest City", which is highly dramatic and exaggerated.
Toshiro Mifune accurately interprets his inner performance when making his decision
And in the big scene of thousands of troops and horses, the movement of the group also follows the rules of the axis, such as the chaotic scene after the assassination of the city lord in "Spider's Nest City", you will find that the movement of the army is moving along a clear axis, which is very neat. The war scenes, which were originally difficult to handle, were edited based on changes in the axis, and the final visual effects were smooth and shocking.
In the scheduling of the camera, Kurosawa Akira uses his genius technique to dedicate a scene of divine strokes in the film: at the dinner party where Vulture invites Miki's father and son, Vulture, who thinks he has cut the grass and removed the roots, fidgets, and hallucinates twice "see the ghost".
In these two long shots of "colliding with ghosts", we can clearly feel Akira Kurosawa's use of "montage inside the lens" - the authenticity given by the long shot itself amplifies the tension of the actor's performance, and the unknown things outside the painting create a tense suspense atmosphere, gripping and appetizing. At the same time, whenever the camera follows Vulture's footsteps and shakes towards other visitors, Miki's ghost disappears again.
Akira Kurosawa uses his usual "panning lens" to complete the conversion of subjective and objective perspectives, and the invisible ghosts of the guests are compared to Vulture's "ghosts in the heart". At the same time, it also hints that Vulture, who has not been able to cut the grass and remove the roots, is about to be in trouble. A long shot scheduling, while completing the narrative, amplifies the emotions of the characters and paves the way for the future plot.
In terms of shooting techniques, Akira Kurosawa's early films were standard as standard lenses + telephoto lenses + multi-camera (it was not until "Sengoku Heroes" that the use of widescreen began), and since "Seven Samurai", Kurosawa has used telephoto lenses to create a daunting "sense of speed" in his films. The same technique is also reflected in "Spider's Nest City".
Miki encounters a ghost hitting the wall
At the beginning of the film, Vulture and Miki encounter a "ghost hitting the wall", and the two have a hot brain. When shooting this section, we can clearly feel that the lens is getting smaller and smaller after continuous "jump clipping", and the telephoto lens is used to capture moving characters. The cluttered woods in the background and foreground are blurred by the telephoto lens, which creates a sense of rapidity because the main body of the character moves too fast, causing the background and foreground to become a "floating light", which is also Kurosawa's unique skill in creating a sense of speed.
It is worth mentioning that the above-mentioned "Axial cut" and "cutting on motion" are both personal characteristics of Akira Kurosawa's disregard for Hollywood shooting routines. The use of telephoto lenses compresses the picture space, which is also the embodiment of Kurosawa's early pursuit of a relatively flat painting style. In addition, Kurosawa has always attached great importance to environmental dynamics, such as wind, fog, thunder, rain, electricity, the weather still plays a role in rendering emotions and amplifying emotions in this film, and the distinct "private shadow style" also distinguishes "Spider's Nest City" from other Macbeth adaptations.
Examination of the "tyrant" Kurosawa Akira fury at Toho
Before the start of "Spider's Nest City", Kurosawa only wanted to take on the position of producer, but Toho considered the cost was too high, or handed it over to Akira Kurosawa. The original "Spider's Nest Castle" was built at the foot of Mt. Fuji, very flat and lacking in three-dimensional sense. Seeing that Toho cut corners, Kurosawa Akira, known as the "tyrant", immediately stopped doing it: "The soil is not black, there is no fog, the construction is not yet imposing, how to shoot?" Toho did not dare to offend the cash cow, and the spider nest city was moved from the foot of the mountain to the mountainside.
Akira Kurosawa's artistic insistence is tantamount to "finding guilt", the transport of props alone makes the crew bitter, and finally the U.S. Marine Corps stationed near Mt. Fuji called a battalion of gendarmes to help, and the core building in the film, the "Spider's Nest City", has to be completed. In addition, the examiner Kurosawa Akira also demanded that the lacquerware must be specially made according to the samples he found in the museum, and at the same time required that the outer walls of the castle and the armor of the soldiers be painted black, so as to match the effect of the ink painting caused by the large amount of mist in the film, and also in line with the depiction of the castle in the Ancient Scrolls of Japan.
In order to get the desired scenery, Kurosawa Akira also did not hesitate to separate the production team, the inner courtyard of The Spider's Nest Castle was built in the Tamagawa Studio of Toho Co., Ltd., and Toho's production team also transported volcanic soil from Mt. Fuji, so that the interior and exterior scenes photographed in different locations could be visually matched. The rest of the indoor scenes were filmed in a small studio in Tokyo.
In addition, the footage of the Spider Hand Forest is actually a combination of the real scene of the Mt. Fuji Forest + the interior of the Tokyo studio, while the scene of the Hatsu Mansion was filmed in the Izu Peninsula, which is several miles away from both of these places. I have to admit that it is Kurosawa's pursuit of the extreme appeal of light and shadow that perfectly shows the historical pattern of the chaotic and tragic song of "Spider's Nest City".
The highlight of the film, The scene where Hatsu is pierced by a rebel arrow on the castle tower, and the heartbroken Kurosawa Akira actually invited a professional archer to work hard! In order not to pit Mifune, the production team had already designed a course of action for him and told him to "wave hard in the direction you go when you change positions, and we will know where to shoot." Even so, mifune's expression of pain and struggle when he was shot as a hedgehog was definitely not a performance, more like praying for "good man to spare his life".
After tossing himself and tossing his teammates, Kurosawa's almost crazy artistic persistence is also the reason why "Spider's Nest City" is famous all over the world.
For artists, Spider's Nest City is an inexhaustible asset. In Polanski's 1971 adaptation of Macbeth, it is to some extent learned from the audiovisual techniques of "Spider's Nest City". In Brian de Palma's old version of Carrie the Witch, carrie's mother is stabbed with a knife all over her body, and the inspiration is the death scene where Vulture is pierced by a thousand arrows. The textile witch in "Spider's Nest City" appeared in "Millennium Actress" after her image was animated, and Zhang Jiaping, another Chinese theater artist, also put "Spider's Nest City" on the theatrical stage.
To this day, Akira Kurosawa's artistic achievements in "Spider's Nest City" are still talked about by the majority of film fans, and Akira Kurosawa's deconstruction of the form of noh drama, the use of mirror-moving techniques, and the analysis of the original sin of human nature are all excellent capital that makes this film a classic in film history. Behind the cold to the extreme, there is a director with a strong sense of historical responsibility and a sense of distress, using a highly stylized film and television language, carefully arranged a cautionary fable. The greedy Vulture is hidden in the fog along with the fortress and has been forgotten by history. But "Spider's Nest City" is timeless and will always be remembered by film history.
Author: Ma Tian
Produced by Time.com
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