Event: The Choiceless Choice: Macbeth into Kumonosu-jo
Date: 19 February 2025
Time: 12:15-14:00
Venue: MKS414, Level 4, MAKS Building
Programme:
12:15 The Choiceless Choice: Macbeth into Kumonosu-jo
Speaker:
Faculty of Media & Knowledge Sciences
Hosted by:
Department of Media & Communications
Faculty of Media & Knowledge Sciences
13:00 Q & A session/informal discussion
This Seminar is part of the MAKS Research Seminar Series.
Abstract:
This talk addresses the general critical misconception that Akira Kurosawaâs Kumonosu-jo, a 1957 transcultural film adaptation of William Shakespeareâs Macbeth retitled Throne of Blood, subverts the tragedyâs oxymoronic intermeshing of its metaphysical preoccupation with predestination and self-determination. Hence, for instance, Joan Mellenâs odd claim that this Japanese film version sacrifices the playâs ambivalent interplay of free will and fate because â[a]mbivalence does not suit the Buddhist-Noh vision of the world Kurosawa has chosen for Throne of Bloodâ. But Kurosawa, it should be stressed, creates an oxymoronic metaphysical vision parallel to Shakespeareâs by filtering his transmutation of Macbeth through mugen or phantasmal Noh, a subgenre of Noh theatre developed from what Kunio Komparu describes as the latterâs predilection for â[t]he fusion of opposing conceptsâ. As Keiko I. McDonald astutely observes, in fact, Kurosawa pivots Kumonosu-jo on mugen Nohâs âmeeting of two ârealitiesâ [âŠ] a blend of natural and supernatural planes of existenceâ. It is indeed this blending blurring any clear-cut distinctions between predestined and premeditated human action that constitutes the cinematic backbone of Kurosawaâs revisioning of Macbethâs existential predicament, that of having been fated to fall freely. What G. Wilson Knight claims about Macbeth, that ââNothing is but what is notâ: that is the text of the playâ is equally applicable to Kurosawaâs film version. But this statement can be viewed in truer perspective if we consider Washizuâs (Macbethâs) and Mikiâs (Banquoâs) forest encounter with the mugen Noh hag who replaces Shakespeareâs three Weird Sisters.
An excerpt from the film in discussion will be shown before the talk.
Speaker's Profile:
Prof. Saviour Catania obtained his Ph.D. in English Literature from the University of Malta with a thesis entitled A Thematic-Semiotic Comparison of Five Wuthering Heights Film Adaptations. His main areas of research are Film Appropriations and Film Theory with a special focus on foreign film versions of English literary works.
His most recent publications include Truth Beauty as Waking Dream: Hitchcock's Vertigo and the Mystic Oxymoron of Keats' Poetry (Literature/Film Quarterly 40.1, 2016); Ferrying Nothingness: The Charon Motif in Murnau's Nosferatu and Dreyer's Vampyr (Melita Classica 3, 2016); The Undying Light: Yoshida, Bataille and the Ambivalent Spectrality of Brontë's Wuthering Heights published in The Brontë Sisters in Other Wor(l)ds (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014); Signifying Nothing: Bresson's Lancelot du Lac and the Arthurian Paradoxism of Tennyson's Idylls (Merope: 23. 59/60, 2014). He has also published articles in Brontë Studies, Entertext, Literature/Film Quarterly, Merope and Studia Filmoznawcze and contributed book chapters to the anthologies Adapting Poe (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), Shared Waters (co-authored/Rodopi, 2009) and World-Wide Shakespeares (Routledge, 2005). He is currently working on transcultural appropriations of Wuthering Heights on film, including El Sheikh's Al Gharib, Kardar's Dil Diya Dard Liya, Fazil's Dehleez, and Siguion-Reyna's Hihintayin Kita Sa Langit.
He was the lecturer to introduce Film Studies at the University of Malta. The film units he introduced include not only Development of Film Language and Classical and Contemporary Film Theory (within the Faculty of Media and Knowledge Sciences) but also Medieval Literature into Film, Shakespearean Film, and Modern and Post-Modern Novel into Film (within the Department of English, Faculty of Arts). He is also a principal lecturer within the Interdepartmental Masters Programme in Literary Tradition and Popular Culture and the highly innovative Masters Programme in Film Studies developed by Prof. Gloria Lauri Lucente. Within these programmes he lectures together with Prof. Lauri Lucente on Film Technology and the Literary Canon and Film Adaptation, the Literary Tradition and Other Arts.