The Socio-Political Worlds of Macbeths: A Study of Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood and Vishal Bharadwaj’s Maqbool

Abstract

Filmmaking, adaptations, auteur director have now become as old as pop or Elvisian craze. But craziness, frenzy and trance are indivisible elements of human nature. Eugene O’ Neill’s craze for recognition in a post-capitalist world where Yank seeks “belongingness” in vain in The Hairy Ape is a vestibular connection to the frenzy in Shakespeare’s Henry VI: the “left out”; and the “nothing remains.” Shakespearean characters have often been subject to psychotic behaviours. Such manic phases of Shakespearean characters reflect the madness theory whereby people would do anything to fit in. With such shields of madness, they try to understand the socio-politics of the world.

Film adaptation faces challenges of misinterpretations just like in theatrical adaptations as has been stated by G.P. Deshpande, due to ananthapath(multiple readings) and ananthapathak (multiple readers), in “An Affair to Remember”. It is seen that an adapted movie like a drama is ‘dwija’ or twice born and is read first; performed later. This paper intends to study the socio-politics of the adapted and adopted worlds of the new Macbeths in cinema as represented by Akira Kurosawa in the Japanese adaptation of Macbeth as Throne of Blood and Vishal Bharadwaj in his Indian adaptation of the metatext as Maqbool.