Akira Kurosawa
Japan – 1985
Screenplay: Akira Kurosawa, Hideo Oguni, Masato Ide
Cinematography: Asakazu Nakai Takao Saitô Shôji Ueda
Production: Greenwich Film Productions, Herald Ace Nippon, Herald Films
Language: Japanese
Duration: 160 min
Color: Color
Synopsis: Lord Hidetora Ichimonji is weary of battle. The time has come for him to step back and hand over his fiefdom to his three sons. The two older ones, Taro and Jiro, eager to take command, flatter Lord Hidetora and vow to welcome him as honored guest for the rest of his years, but the youngest son, Saburo, warns his father of the folly of expecting a quiet old age and peace in a kingdom acquired with great violence. Enraged, the warlord banishes Saburo, but quickly realizes that his other two sons are selfish, ruthless men, and have no intention of keeping their promises. A war breaks out between brothers and only the banished Saburo remains honorable and fights to redeem his mad, foolish father.
Notes:
Of all Kurosawa Akira’s films, Ran is the bleakest and most pessimistic, set as it is in a world of treachery and slaughter – a world, as Saburo says, “that is barren of loyalty and feeling”. His verdict is echoed at the end of the film, when both he and Hidetora lie dead, by the loyal samurai Tango (the Kent figure, after Shakepeare’s “King Lear”). “It is the gods that weep,” Tango declares, when the Fool berates the seemingly callous deities. “They can’t save us from ourselves… Men prefer sorrow to joy, suffering to peace.” For although Kurosawa sticks largely to the plot of King Lear, he diverges from Shakespeare in one crucial aspect: while the play tells us little of Lear’s past, in the film we learn how Hidetora gained and held on to power through the infliction of cruelty and suffering, often on the innocent, and it’s these cruelties that come back, karma-like, to destroy him and his sons. The film’s final image is one of utter desolation: a blind man (himself one of Hidetora’s victims as a child) teetering helplessly on the edge of a precipice, the protective image of Lord Buddha falling from his hand; this, Kurosawa seems to be telling us, is the epitome of the human condition. But despite the grimness of its theme, Dalle Ore—one of the production’s several assistant directors—recalls that Ran “wasn’t at all a depressing film to make. It was so intense and concentrated.” And the massive expenditure of the production paid off spectacularly, as can be seen in the recent digital transfer. Ran never looks anything short of magnificent, and the battle scenes stir the senses and the soul. The sound transfer makes the most of Kurosawa’s meticulously detailed sound effects – banners snapping in the wind, horses’ hooves thundering across the terrain, flames tearing at sundering wood, the shuffle and scuttle of phalanxes of footsoldiers manoeuvring into position, Lady Kaede’s silken kimono sliding across the polished wooden floor. Takemitsu Toru’s plangent score, strongly influenced – at Kurosawa’s suggestion – by the symphonies of Mahler as much as by the music of Noh theatre, comes across with untrammelled emotional impact, not least in the final funeral march for Hidetora and Saburo.
Excerpt from Kemp, Philip. “Battle Royal.” Sight & Sound 26, no. 6 (June 2016): 94-95.