RAN Movie Review

Medieval warlord Hidetora Ichimonji (Tatsuya Nakadai) cedes power over his empire to the oldest of his three sons, setting off a chain of tragic events fueled by greed, ambition, anger, and betrayal. With the 1985 release of his epic adaptation of Shakespeare's King Lear, Akira Kurosawa achieved considerably more than a mere resuscitation of his career. Ran is an emotionally wrenching, awe-inspiring spectacle that takes its place alongside the few great cinematic interpretations of Shakespeare—a handful of films that includes Olivier's Henry V, Welles's Chimes at Midnight, and Kurosawa's own Throne of Blood. Kurosawa boldly took liberties with Lear (Lear's daughters are now sons, for starters) and he added—as Welles did with Chimes at Midnight, the main sources of which are the two parts of Henry IV—elements from other Shakespeare plays. In Ran, a Lady Macbeth—inspired character named Lady Kaede (brilliantly played by Mieko Harada) would have easily walked off with the picture, were the picture as a whole not so astonishing. Much has been written about Ran’s visual qualities, and understandably so, yet it's the film's narrative flow and emotional fullness that give those images their overwhelming resonance, making them far more than pretty pictures. Even in such passages as the deceptively calm opening sequence, in which the savagely ruthless but now old Hidetora, peacefully seated on a sun-drenched mountainside, explains his catastrophically ill-conceived plans for his impending “retirement,” Kurosawa maintains absolute control over the tone of his material. It's in Ran’s battle sequences that that control is most apparent, and those scenes are among the greatest depictions of combat in cinema history. Horrifying, staggeringly beautiful, yet as carefully delineated on an emotional level as any of the film's more intimate moments, Ran’s battle scenes evoke the full power of Shakespeare's tragedy. Kurosawa and his production team (a major contributor being composer Toru Takemitsu) have placed all of their technological power at the service of their story, and the performers—particularly Tatsuya Nakadai in the demanding role of Hidetora—live up to the challenge as well. Kurosawa is one of the very few filmmakers who created several masterpieces in his career. Ran—Kurosawa's 27th film, made when he was 75 years old—is one of them.

NEXT STOP … Seven Samurai, Throne of Blood, Alexander Nevsky

1985 (R) 160m/C JP FR Tatsuya Nakadai, Akira Terao, Jinpachi Nesu, Daisuke Ryu, Meiko Harada, Hisashi Igawa, Peter; D: Akira Kurosawa; W: Akira Kurosawa, Hideo Oguni, Masato Ide; M: Toru Takemitsu. Academy Awards ‘85: Best Costume Design; British Academy Awards ‘86: Best Foreign Film; Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards ‘85: Best Foreign Film; National Board of Review Awards ‘85: Best Director (Kurosawa); New York Film Critics Awards ‘85: Best Foreign Film; National Society of Film Critics Awards ‘85: Best Cinematography, Best Film; Nominations: Academy Awards ‘85: Best Art Direction/Set Decoration, Best Cinematography, Best Director (Kurosawa). VHS, LV, Letter-box, Closed Caption FXL, HMV