Happy Birthday Akira Kurosawa!… You may not have heard of him, but the movies you’ve come to love have his signatures all over them. Remember the “Magnificent Seven” with Yul Brynner, Steve McQueen and a host of other famous actor? This is a remake of Kurosaw’s “Seven Samurai“. Clint Eastwoods “A Fistful of Dollars“, was a remake of ” Yojimbo. A little movie called “Star Wars”? George Luca is the first to say that R2D2 and C-3PO are heavily influenced from characters in “The Hidden Fortress “. I can keep going on, but you get the idea, let’s suffice it to say; in 1989, he was awarded the Academy Award for Lifetime Achievement “for cinematic accomplishments that have inspired, delighted, enriched and entertained worldwide audiences and influenced filmmakers throughout the world”.
So for Akira Kurosawa’s birthday I would like to suggest two incredible (In my opinion) Shakespearean adaptations. They are in Japanese with sub-titles, and set in feudal Japan, but don’t hold that against them, that just makes these films appear all the more mystical:
Ran (Netflix) (IMDB) - The King Lear adaptation Roger Ebert said ” Ran is a great, glorious achievement. Kurosawa often must have associated himself with the old lord as he tried to put this film together, but in the end he has triumphed”
Throne of Blood (Netflix) (IMDB) - The Macbeth adaptation which is one of my all time favorite movies, that captures the essence and shadows of Shakespeare’s tragedy better then any other version.
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