Narrative technique · used in 3 films
Moving the plot, character relationships and themes of a Shakespeare play into a new time, place or genre. The basic dramatic structure stays, and the world around it changes.
Examples
Akira Kurosawa · 1957
Kurosawa keeps the bones of Macbeth and changes almost everything around them. The 3 witches become 1 pale spirit in the forest, and Lady Macbeth becomes Asaji, who barely raises her voice. You know the story, so you watch every step toward the murder with dread.
Where to see it: The spirit in Spider's Web Forest. Washizu and Miki find a ghostly figure spinning thread in a hut, and it tells them exactly what titles they will get that day.
Akira Kurosawa · 1985
Kurosawa moves King Lear to Sengoku-era Japan, and the fit is so precise that the adaptation helps you understand both works. Hidetora is Lear without the last scrap of hope the play holds on to. The Japanese fatalism rules out any chance of redemption, and I feel like that makes the tragedy more absolute.
Where to see it: The castle massacre. Hidetora wanders out of the burning tower while armies kill all around him. He is like Lear here, with no sympathetic witness left beside him.
Roger Allers, Rob Minkoff · 1994
The Lion King is Hamlet moved to the African savanna. It has the murdered father-king, the uncle who steals the throne, the exiled prince, the ghost's command and the return that puts things right. The film strips Hamlet down to the parts the story can't stand without. Then it rebuilds them into something that works for children and adults at once.
Where to see it: Mufasa's ghost in the clouds. It is the ghost of Hamlet's father moved into an animated sky.
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