Kurosawa's adaptation of Gorky's play is both literal and theatrical. Little of the original was changed, yet Kurosawa's innate cinematic sense enables him to avoid the look of a play-on-film. In the confined, depressing place that is the only setting for the action, the camera seems to be everywhere, not so much photographing a set as examining an environment and its inhabitants. The characters-thief, landlady, gambler, priest, samurai, prostitute, actor, and others-represent various ways of life. What they have in common is that all have come to grief, each clinging to the delusion that his or her fate is different from what it is. Kurosawa sees their predicament as both miserable and ridiculous; his troupe of actors performs brilliantly, creating characters at once pathetic and comic.