RAN

Rating:
Summary: "Is somebody crying?"
Review: Yes... yes I am.

Akira Kurosawa's Ran is one of those very rare films that is capable of making me actually stop and say, "no way." Kurosawa has managed to craft a liberal retelling of Shakespeare's King Lear into a heartwrenching, almost totally crushing vision of the pathetic human condition that actually makes Shakespeare's point better than the Bard did himself. [Wait on those torches and pitchforks! Hear me out!] By removing the Edmund and Edgar subplot, Kurosawa has also oblitered the single hopeful aspect of the play [Edgar triumphs, Edmund gets his just desserts]. What remains is the central tale of an old king (not a hugely sympathetic figure thanks to his rather brutal past and on-screen pride, but still worthy of respect) being ground into the dirt and, eventually, killed. (The death of Lear is no less a murder than the death of Hidetora.) This happens through the treachery, avarice, and sheer lust for power of the king's children, who eventually drive him insane. In one sense, this is an extremely unpleasant movie to watch-- as the last shot so articulately shows us, the central message of the film is that "man is born crying and when he has cried enough, he dies." Religion and friendship fall by the wayside in a film just as likely to make you weep from the sheer power of its argument as from the force of its filmaking.

...Which is nonetheless considerable. The much-referenced assault on the Third Castle is without a doubt one of the most stunningly perfect sequences ever put on film-- stunning no less because of its graphic depiction of the horrors of war than because of the lingering shots of the crazed Hidetora, unable even to kill himself, capable only of sitting in abject horror as flaming arrows rip through the air near him and all of his companions die around him. The sheer amount of suffering conveyed to us, both through the color palette of firey reds and smokey blacks and through the soundless screams of the wounded holding their own limbs or crawling towards the pig troughs for a final drink, is simply unbearable. The bright red blood draws attention to both itself and the entire subtle wrongness of the sequence-- is this really human nature? Hidetora's reaction to the carnage becomes the viewer's own-- wordless, wide-eyed astonishment. Wide-eared, as well, since the sequence would not be half so affected if not accompanied by a slow, moving tune that only makes us more aware of the noises of battle that we can't hear, but imagine more vividly than we would like. The rifle shot that ends this tune (generally inciting a slight jerk on the part of the audience) is mechanized and harsh, and signals (after a short flurry of sound) a blasted silence as Hidetora walks, stunned, out of the castle. This sequence, while a perfect example of the amount of pure artistry present in this film, is by no means alone in its astonishingness; the entire film is a work of genius.

As for the much-maligned DVD transfer, I'm afraid that I have no real basis of comparison as I have only ever seen the Masterworks Edition. As a little bit of a purist (I don't watch pan-and-scan), I do find myself disturbed by the things that other reviews point out; however, they obviously detracted little from my viewing experience. All-in-all, I would say that the current DVD is passable, but I look forward with great anticipation to a future version that truly respects this masterpeice (and doesn't have obvious subtitle typos that make the viewer snicker).

In short, this movie is quite possibly my candidate for "greatest film ever made." It paints a deeply despairing, nihilistic picture of both human nature and the world as a whole, and does so with a brutally ruthless frankness that I have seen almost nowhere else. Artistically, it is practically without fault-- powerful and moving, it is practically a "how-to" of effective moviemaking. I cannot recommend Ran too highly.

Rating:
Summary: See It to Believe It
Review: You have to see it to believe it. This is the Bard's play in 16th Century Japan. Our King Lear carves up the kingdom and it is downhill from there. No sisters in this version, warlike brothers battle for supremacy. The good brother is banished and the old man comes to see the mistake he made and the devastation. I am not going to try to give you all the Japanese names. Understand that the evil witch of a Japanese wife can be the downfall of any warlord. The battle scenes are probably the best ever filmed. The colors of the banners and costumes jump right off the screen. The blood is very red. This canvas is so rich; there are interior scenes that could have been painted by Rembrandt. In the top fifteen films ever made, Ran is Akira Kurosawa?s masterpiece.