Ran (1985)

 

Ran

“Ran”, the last movie made by Akira Kurosawa, is frequently hailed as one of the best movies of all time and keeping in mind the very impressive catalogue of films Kurosawa made, this is a tall order to live up to.

At the opening of the movie, Hidetora Ichimonji (Tatsuya Nakadai), an aging warlord, has gathered his three sons, his trusted advisors and two vassals on a hilltop after a hunt. He is retiring and passing on the leadership of the clan to his eldest son Taro (Akira Terao) while each son is to take stewardship of his three castles. He also wants them to stand united which Taro and Jiro (Jinpachi Nezu) agree to, while the third son, Saburo (Daisuke Ryu), complain that this is not going to happen. For this Saburo and the advisor, Tango (Masayuki Yui) are banished.

Taro’s wife Kaede (Mieko Harada) manipulates Taro into banishing Hidetora and his retinue to take the title of Great Lord for himself (a largely honorary title now he already has assumed leadership). Hidetora seeks refuge in the empty third castle (Saburo being banished), but it is a trap and it is soon attacked by Jiro’s and Taro’s forces combined. All of the defenders are killed except for Hidetora, who is now mad. Hidetora is joined by Tango and the court jester Kyoami (Shinnosuke Ikehata) to wander the land. In the battle Taro is killed by one of Jiro’s generals.

Kaede now moves on to Jiro, making him renounce his wife Sue (Yosiko Miyazaki) and getting her killed. When Saburo shows up to claim his father she also urges battle, although it is certain disaster.

In the end, everybody dies. That is hardly a spoiler.

There are two elements that make “Ran” stand out. The first one is that of style. “Ran” is Kurosawa’s take on Shakespeare’s “King Lear” transposed to Japan, but acted out in the No play tradition of Japan. This curious combo gives it a theatrical character which makes it look very much like a stage play, complete with exaggerated gestures, slow deliberate movements and formal dialogue. It is not a 1 to 1 adaption of course, but stylistically it removes itself from realism and into the mythological stylicism of a theatre performance. It is entrancing and interesting but can also be a challenge to follow. The apparent slow pace and emphasis on dialogue threw my son. He lasted barely 10 minutes. I found it interesting, but understand how it can be polarizing and my guess is that much of its accolades come the stylistic choices.

The second element is that we see only half the story. In the story we experience, the Lady Kaede is an evil villain who orchestrates the destruction of everybody, Hidetora is the poor victim, and his sons are dupes, getting manipulated. We learn, however, that in his rise to power Hidetora did horrible things. He burned down castles and killed countless people, among these Kaeda’s family as well as Sue’s. He took over their castles and made his sons marry the daughters of the former owners. What we see as the viciousness of Kaede is actually her revenge and it is difficult to ague that it is not a just revenge, but because it is in the past (and we did not see it) it is only a cerebral revenge. Emotionally, we are in the present and disconnected from the past. The revenge is now the evil and Hidetora, stripped of his power, is a sad victim, losing everything he had.

I find this play on the viewer exceptionally creative. I am not familiar with the King Lear story, so I do not know if Kurosawa can tale credit for the idea, but it is carried out to perfection.

Personally, I found only two distractions in the movie. Samurai warfare and repeater guns seems like an anachronism and makes it hard to place the story historically, but then again, it is all very stylized, so who cares. Secondly, the drums of the scored kept bring me to “Monty Python and the Holy Grail”. As this made me giggle at inappropriate times, I found this to be a poor scoring choice.

“Ran” is a good movie and it is a very interesting movie, but, for me, it does not rank among the best ever. I also think Kurosawa made two or three movie I found better that “Ran”. Then again, that still places it in very good and august company.