If I wanted to give five stars before watching the ending, I had to give it four stars after watching the ending. Consistent with the reason for giving "Ran" four stars before, compared with Shakespeare's original works, there is a cliff-like decline on the epistemological level. Regardless of this preexistence, I can't wait to elaborate on the merits of the adaptation.
The adaptation of "Spider Nest City" until the end has always made me very comfortable. It is not like "Ran" in the overall framework of the adaptation, but the processing of the connection of the scenes is very delicate and smooth. This makes the language of film play the greatest role here, and it is more in line with the current logic. The whole story looks compact and lively, highlighting the important plots, while the unimportant plots are explained with a simple shot, which not only ensures the integrity of the story but also makes the story more clever and better.
Two of the adaptation points stood out to me.
One is that when the son of the old monarch went to Miki's city gate to ask for help, Miki hesitated for a moment, and then expelled him with an arrow. A simple fragment explained what Miki was thinking at this time and the city's self-protection. Miki knew that Wu Shi was a monarch, but after weighing the pros and cons, he remembered the prophecy of the lich and chose Wu Shi's side, but there must be steps, waiting for a reasonable reason to open the door, that is the corpse of the old monarch.
The second is the way of Wu Shi's death before the end. In "Macbeth", Macbeth died in his confrontation with his loyal minister Macduff, while in "Spider Nest", Wu Shi died in the arrows of his soldiers' anger. Lose. The front part of "Spider's Nest" rarely explains that Wu Shi has long been unpopular, but in "Macbeth", Macduff's departure and so on show that Macbeth's wolf ambition has long been revealed. So Akira Kurosawa used a shot at the end to reveal Takeshi's loss. It even satirizes the self-rewarding consequences of his step by step, which is very pleasing.
After watching "Spider Nest City" and "Ran", I think Akira Kurosawa still likes "Hamlet" very much, and both movies have borrowed some. In "Chaos", the classic stalk "killing brother and marrying sister-in-law" is borrowed. In "Spider Nest City", the actors are used to insinuate the crimes (Uncle Hamlet / Wu Shi) that they try to cover up to stimulate the sins in their hearts.
Finally, let me talk about why I think there is an epistemological problem with "The Spider's Nest" compared to "Macbeth".
In "Macbeth", the three witches gave a prophecy, predicting that Macbeth would become a king, but also predicted that Banquo's descendants would also become kings. But Banquo's son does not become king at the end.
The Lich in "Spider's Nest City" also made the same prediction, but at the end, it did not clearly explain who would be the next king. The point is that without a clear explanation, it produced a cliff-like fall on the epistemological level.
I think both of them handle the complex and subtle aspects of human nature very well, and even Kurosawa handles it more subtly.
But the end of "Macbeth" clearly states that the prophecy of the three witches is a prank, emphasizing the reflection on fate. Whether it was Macbeth was destined to do such a bad and stupid thing, and his tragic ending was already written in his destiny, or was it his own greed, desire, and the heart of snakes and rats that led to his annihilation. Shakespeare told us with the ending.
I don't think each of us has a definite, knowable, fixed destiny ahead of us. Indeed, there are too many force majeure and unchangeable factors in human existence in this world. But destiny is more fluid, unknown, and nonexistent. It is written with practice and realized with firm heart and worthy actions.
In Yu-Gi-Oh, the popular card game in Japan, the rules are endless, and new cards are always added, each with its own rules of use. So all cards can never be combined in a general set of rules, which is what Lacan calls "not all" multitudes.
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