It is an indisputable fact that tragedy is always more contagious than comedy, and Shakespeare is so far unsurpassed in its presentation, and his four great tragedies (Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth) were created in 1601-1607, when capitalism was in its infancy, and the famous enclosure movement in England was one after another. What is remarkable is that Shakespeare's plays never involve criticism of politics and kings, but only focus on the good and evil of human nature and the limitations of the times. It is true that as a king, you cannot escape the fate of birth and the pace of historical progress, and "Macbeth" is the game story of human desire and reason in the four tragedies.
The Japanese film master Akira Kurosawa has always been obsessed with the study of the samurai class, and has developed a strong interest in Shakespeare's plays in his artistic creation, and the story of Macbeth being seduced by desire to kill the sage monarch and assassinate Tadayoshi has many similarities with the Japanese Civil War. In 1957, Akira Kurosawa adapted it into Spider's Nest City, which combined the stylized rhymeless language, the performance method of Noh, the claustrophobic palace contracting and the desire of the human heart, and the thin coolness of human nature, in an attempt to complete the tribute and inheritance of the spirit of the master.
Even as a world-class film director, Shakespeare is still the most revered master of art in his life, his works never rigidly copy the original work, but shoot this historical tragedy with the sky overlooking the human world, showing the struggle in the court and the good and evil of the human heart in all aspects in the film, borrowing Shakespeare's ingenious legendary plot and profound theme to warn the world.
Western media will be "Spider's Nest City" as "the most accurate, the most excellent embodiment of Shakespeare's original spirit of the film", Director Spielberg praised Akira Kurosawa as "Shakespeare of the film industry", from which it can be seen that "Spider's Nest City" is not only the faithful restoration of the plot, but also in the high degree of condensation of human desire and quality morality, this article does not want to start from the adaptation of the plot, but also wants to talk about Akira Kurosawa's inheritance of shakespeare's original era spirit and the most shocking and deeply rooted human characteristics in the film. This inspires the audience to think more deeply about the film.
Created in the Elizabethan era of 1606, Macbeth reflects the transition from the chivalry of the medieval loyal, heroic, and apologetics to the spirit of a new era of greed, disobedience, and fear, and the resulting proliferation of lust and moral degeneration abound. The biggest feature of Shakespeare's plays is not the vivid and vivid language, but the precise control and ultimate restoration of the spirit of the times.
Although the era and region have changed, Akira Kurosawa and Shakespeare's eternal pursuit of the spirit of art is extremely similar, Akira Kurosawa never chooses to copy the original work, but integrates his understanding of the work and local characteristics. From this point of view, the grip of Kurosawa's films lies in the deconstruction of the national psychology of specific social, historical, and cultural contexts, and this unique cultural context and appreciation habits determine the acceptance and popularity of the works.
Spider's Nest Adopts Macbeth's Story Framework, replacing the Japanese spirit of Bushido with western chivalry, transforming the Scottish Kingdom era into the Japanese Sengoku period, and replacing Macbeth with Wagyu Takeshi. Although the characters and social environment have changed, the instinctive human desire and desperate desire for power have not changed. The samurai class was as loyal to the monarch as the Western knights, but suffered constantly from inner desires and external temptations.
Being true to Shakespeare's spirit is not an easy task, and a deep understanding of Shakespeare's characters and background of the times is required. Shakespeare's Macbeth is a figure made up out of thin air, the history of Macbeth is a well-governed king, during the reign of Guotai Min'an, he is a devout Christian, in order to quell the civil unrest killed his cousin Duncan, for which he went to Rome for nearly half a year, becoming the first and only king in Scottish history to do so.
Shakespeare borrowed Macbeth's name to conceive of a dark image of a conspiratorial murderer, closely related to the turbulent social changes of the time. Shakespeare uses character relationships to critique the darkness of society and the selfishness of human nature, in which the zeitgeist encompasses the transformation of capital under the expansion of commerce. The British economic structure changed from an agrarian economy to a capitalist economy, the aristocratic class gradually declined, the middle class gradually rose, the gap between rich and poor became more and more serious, and the social turmoil made Shakespeare see the contradictions that were constantly intensifying in society, and the concern for the future and the greed of human nature gathered a strong sense of distress, which was embodied in literature and the creation of the turn from comedy stories to tragic stories, and Macbeth was the product of social turmoil.
Kurosawa's period of civil war, although different in form from britain in terms of change, was substantially similar in spirit. Akira Kurosawa is extremely good at showing different cross-sections of human nature under the Japanese cultural system, such as the robber Tadashimaru in Rashomon and the Kanbei in "Seven Samurai", like two sides of the same coin, representing selfish greed and a bright and just human nature. This spirit is sublimated in "Spider's Nest City" through the presentation of stage plays.
Shakespeare's plays usually use the stage as a carrier to promote the plot through exaggerated physical movements and prose poetic language, while Akira Kurosawa uses the transformation of audiovisual language to show the essence of Japanese culture in multidimensional time and space. Because theatrical art relies on stage presentation, there is a natural disadvantage compared with the time-space montage transformation of the film, but Akira Kurosawa rarely adopts the stage-style expression method in the film. Most of the scenes in the film take place in a castle with an extremely limited range, focusing on the emotional fluctuations of the characters' ups and downs, thus showing the loneliness of the characters' mood and the development of the times.
Kurosawa's films have very little dialogue with the characters, most of them show the plot direction through actions, and there is not even a line in the famous "Killing King" scene, but it shows the character's frightened and restless emotional state, these stage-style performance methods are unique, but the spirit is no less than the depth of thought of Shakespeare's plays, thus realizing the inheritance of spiritual essence.
At the beginning of the film, there is a chorus of Noh music that "human desires are like a fierce battlefield, from ancient times to the present, they will never change", thus unlocking the chapter of human desires. This coincides with the classic line in "Macbeth" that "people are really ridiculous, dare not face their own sincerity", indicating that the hidden desires in human hearts are often the devouring of human nature, which in turn leads to the fall of heroes.
The script of "Spider's Nest City" is only 20,000 words, but each sentence is rich in deep meaning, such as this sentence "The king is not seen, the city of delusion is still there, the soul is still in it, the obsession is not enlightened, and the same is true from ancient times to the present." The story of the spider's nest city is only a superficial appearance, and what is even more magnificent hidden in it is the "obsessive Shura Dao", the mythical Asura who often fights with the emperor Shi Tian, and belongs to one of the fierce and ugly gods, referring to the lack of moral restraint of human nature.
The title of the film "the throne of blood" originally meant blood-colored kingship, but it was translated as "Spider's Nest City" or "Spider's Nest Palace Fort", which has two meanings, one is the bloody conflict that occurs in the court battles, and the other is related to the name of the castle, the Spider's Nest City symbolizes the peak of power, the abyss of desire, the samurai class represented by Vulture Tsutake shed spooky blood when killing the king, and the wife marrying the blood-stained spear to the guards. Blood is inextricably linked to regime change, while at the same time pointing to the distortion of human nature by both internal and external temptations.
Power itself has no meaning, but what is hidden is actually the human heart. It is common for people to expect to be promoted and get rich, but the difference is that some people want to ascend to the heavens in one step, and some people are indifferent to things. For Vulture, his inner desire for power is revealed, and this underlying psychology is gradually amplified by the deepening of his wife's shallow spear, like a "halo wheel" that quickly occupies Vulture's heart. On the one hand, he was afraid of what his wife called monarchical skepticism, lamenting that he could not enter the core circle of power. On the other hand, he was hindered by the constraints of traditional morality on the relationship between monarchs and subjects. Making a choice in such a dilemma is clearly both deliberate and emotionally impulsive.
Lu Xun said that "tragedy is to tear apart the valuable things in life for people to see", and the moment when those beautiful things fall apart can shock the audience's heart and inspire pity and feelings. How different are the good guys and the bad guys? It is nothing more than the result of the inner thought of heaven and hell. Both Shakespeare and Akira Kurosawa choose to point directly into the hearts of the audience, thinking about the essential difference between good and evil, and their strong critical attitude can be understood from the death of Macbeth and Hatsutake at the end.
In the film, the destruction of Vulture is divided into three steps: killing the king, doubting, and madness. From the expansion of desire to uncontrollable behavior, Hatsu takeshi first tasted the sweet fruit of power, but because of this, he was saddled with heavy psychological pressure and showed no trust in his courtiers, saying, "What is the use of discussing with you rice buckets?" "The thunderous temper and the attitude of fear and doubt symbolize the exhaustion of the spirit after the desire is reached, and this state of prosperity and decline is heralding the beginning of the downward slope of life, and when the spider's nest city soldiers approach the city, and there is no one to rely on on all sides, the desperate state of mind arises spontaneously, the evil demons that lead the wrong way become the fuse of destruction, and failure and destruction become the inevitable fate of Vulture.
The witch in Shakespeare's original book was replaced by the image of the white-haired prophet who predicted the ascension of Hatsutake and his failure as well. Why, when disaster strikes, Why did Hatsu takeshi only remember the good side and choose to forget the bad side? This is a direct reflection of the thinness of human nature, and the prophets and witches are only a touchstone of human morality.
Prophets are everywhere and understand human nature, but they are constantly testing the limits of human desire. She once sang, "How ugly there are in the world, but they are born in the world, and they are as lowly as ants, and they are still secretly born." Why bother with yourself, how stupid. Life is like a flower, coming and going in a hurry. Eventually, it will also be transformed into a skeleton of rotten flesh. For the sake of power, people do not hesitate to burn themselves and jump into the deep pool of the five turbidities. Sin is hoarded and reached the end of confusion. The rotting flesh falls into the soil and blossoms, releasing aroma. Ridiculous people, it's ridiculous."
When Macbeth's wife died, he also had a painful and heartfelt realization" "Life is just a walking shadow, a clumsy man who points fingers on the stage, appears for a moment, and quietly retreats in silence; It is a story told by a fool, full of noise and commotion, and cannot find any meaning." Apparently, Macbeth experienced the emptiness of desire and the ridiculousness of his actions after his madness, while Vulture was killed by a random arrow without showing his inner monologue.
The prophet once prophesied that "as long as the spider-footed forest does not move, he will not be invincible." Vulture Thought that this was a signal of victory in the war, but he did not expect to witness the movement of the Spider-Foot Forest, and he would never know that it was the enemy moving in the disguise of the forest. Overly arrogant blind self-confidence makes the atmosphere of the film extremely depressed, and in the face of prophecy, the soldiers give up resistance, just as the so-called success is also Xiao He defeated Xiao He. It is not so much that Hatsuzu died in the war as he died from the greed and selfishness of human nature.
The child conceived by Hatsutake's wife unfortunately miscarried, and the situation of people and money seems to have a fatalistic tendency of "present newspaper". Akira Kurosawa does not shy away from looking directly at the good and evil of human nature, but puts various metaphors on the straightforward disclosure of human nature. The reason why Vulture Takeshi hunted down his brother Miki and his son to the end was nothing more than the fear of the prophecy coming true, and his wife Asagusa said, "I didn't get my hands full of blood for Miki's son", and this blood was eaten back with the blood of the child's death, confirming the cycle of fate that Skynet was restored and neglected.
With His hands stained with unwashable sin, Kurosawa realized the humility of human nature in the face of desire, and in war he placed philosophical questions about human nature, goodness, greed, fear, life and death, and so on. I don't think it matters, without this guidance, unforeseen desires would also lead people astray, so Kurosawa and Shakespeare want to express the same idea: face the heart, resist desire, enlighten the conscience, and be human.
In "Spider's Nest City", Akira Kurosawa uses delicate techniques to interpret a story full of murderous power grabs to interpret the gloomy calm, Spider's Nest City not only refers to the castle in reality, but also metaphorically refers to the abyss of desire, once caught in the nest of ambition, the greed and selfishness of human nature are like the tiger out of the cage is difficult to control, as the soundtrack of the film sings "Look! Behold! The land was now desolate, and once upon a time it was a fortified castle in which a proud warrior lived, but he died under his ambitions. ”