The film represents an austere and intense remake of Shakespeare’s “Macbeth,” reset in a feudal, martial Japan, and energized by Kurosawa’s seamless fusion of Noh drama, classical theatre, and action epic.

The plot varies little from Shakespeare’s original. Riding home from a victorious battle, Miki and Washizu, the Macbeth figure (here played by Kurosawa’s frequent collaborator Toshiro Mifune,) come across a sylvan mystic, who tells Washizu that he will become Lord of the feudal realm. Spurred by this, and the plottings of his wife, Asaji (Isuzu Yamada,) Washizu carries out a series of successful assassinations to become leader. Yet he is haunted by guilt and ghosts, which drive him to madness and then hubris, believing he cannot be conquered by mortals because the mystic said he could only die when, like Birnam wood coming to Dunsinane, the “Spider’s Web Forest” came to his castle. An opposing army, hidden by the trees, of course, advances, seeking vengeance. Washizu dies, pierced by arrows shot by his own men.

The movie begins at the ending, as smoke and fog encircle the ruins of a castle. From there, the narrative and exposition shift between choruses, prophets, performers, conversations among nameless warriors, and the actions of the central players themselves. What most propels the film is the contrast between hermetic, ritualized domestic court scenes, staged as drama, and whirlwind outdoor footage, showing battles and riders on horseback racing across sweeping, volcanic landscapes. From barren plains, the action quickly shifts to suffocating rooms, where the viewer can feel that the pressure, fear, and guilt that, for Washizu and Asaji, have become concentrated and inescapable. Kurosawa intensifies these court scenes with a chilling stillness and silence. Each moment seems poised on explosion, fraught by paranoia and uncertainty.

What also propels the film is the performance by Mifune and Yamada. Yamada’s character seems to derive from that sense of pure evil, which Shakespeare worked for in Iago, and which was so excellently portrayed by the Nazi interrogator in “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” a character who looks eerily like George Bush’s political advisor, Karl Rove, with his tiny Teutonic spectacles and plans for world domination, but that is ripe for an entirely different discussion. Yet at root, Yamada is a figure of sympathy, as the viewer learns that she is barren, and perhaps pursing vengeance to fill that void and sense of cosmic injustice.

As for Mifune, his polar shifts between decisive action and pure mania can only be compared to Kinski in “Fitzcarraldo,” as he writhes with paroxysms and forced composures that seem to shake the television screen with unnerving energy.

In “Throne of Blood,” Kurosawa seems concerned with the mysticism of action and the strange, indefinable origins which foster our ambitions. One minute, Washizu is a valiant, selfless warrior. Then, with the word of a prophet, an evil seed is planted, and the mechanics of his thoughts change, and degrade, blinding him with madness, power, and guilt. We see him wrestling with choices, but he can only lash out. There is no restraint. Raised on violence and cunning, Washizu can only react with violence and cunning, sending him spiraling further and further away from his original noble ideal. The culture of violence, breeds violence. The hero of action, is destroyed by abstraction. When court ritual can no longer contain his tendencies, he is entirely undone by his own freedom. “How brilliant,” says Asaji in the film. “A great lord, his ambitions set on the world, terrorized and undone by phantoms.”

Kurosawa seems to be intrigued by how even the physically and mentally strong craft their own demise and blame it on religion, passing off complicity on the spirit world. The spirit world seems an uncertain realm, from which we pick our own idols to suit our own desires. What is most stunning about the film is Kurosawa’s differing perspectives on both this freedom of choice and its relation to violence: Washizu comes to prominence through what was considered a noble and worthy violence. Yet he dies after a raw, highly personalized violence, which he has convinced himself is the path to righteousness.