Akira Kurosawa’s Ran
Hidetora Ichimonji is growing old, and waking from a nightmare having fallen asleep on a hunting party accepts that he can no longer rule his kingdom as once he did, his decision announced without preamble to his three sons who accompany him that it is the eldest Taro who will inherit the First Castle and lead the Ichimonji clan, his two brothers Jiro and Saburo expected to bow to him as once they did their warlord father.
His youngest son loyal and devoted only to Hidetora, he questions both the decision and the division of the lands, his father reacting with wrath and exiling both Saburo and his retainer Tango, but soon Hidetora comes to bitterly regret his decision, removed from power and perceiving slight in his meetings with his chosen heir who criticises the actions of his diminished retinue, not realising that Lady Kaede may have a hand in how he is increasingly marginalised.
The daughter of a defeated rival clan, her family killed and their lands stolen, forced to become Taro’s wife Lady Kaede has held onto her grudges against her father-in-law Hidetora who now finds he has no one to turn to, Jiro only interested in using him to gain advantage and Saburo unable to be found, only his fool Kyoami accompanying him as he wanders the desert, slipping into a madness driven by desperation and rage.
One of the final films by Throne of Blood’s Akira Kurosawa, the historical drama Ran (乱, translated as chaos or tumult) was released in 1985 when the director was seventy-five years old, co-written with Hideo Oguni and Masato Ide but paralleling the structure and plot of Shakespeare’s King Lear, a power struggle within a dynasty with three sons displacing the three daughters of the original tragedy.
Epic in scale, with battle scenes of horseback cavalry and footsoldiers carrying banners rippling in the wind, filmed on green plains and the less forgiving black ash sand around the volcanic Mount Aso with the ancient castles of Kumamoto and Himeji as locations as well as a custom-built location which was burnt down during the shooting of the siege, even as it meanders the scale cannot be disputed.
Nominated for four Academy Awards including best director for Kurosawa though Emi Wada was the only winner for her costume design, boldly patterned and cut and shaped for both elegance and movement, Ran stars Tatsuya Nakadai and Mieko Harada as Hidetora and his nemesis Lady Kaede, the extreme emotion of their performances consciously modelled on the Noh style of traditional Japanese theatre, each driven by a madness which accepts no compromise, he seeking answers and guidance in the rolling clouds of the unreachable heavens and she demanding blood.
With Akira Terao, Jinpachi Nezu and Daisuke Ryu as Taro, Jiro and Saburo, colour-coordinated as gold, red and blue to differentiate them and their armies, the film is dominated, as some productions of Lear can be, by Shinnosuke “Peter” Ikehata as the dancing fool Kyoami, the only one who can comment on the behaviour of his master without censure or fear of reprisal for all the good it does, the whole lying somewhere between operatic and melodrama as the characters bring their fates to them through deliberately chosen actions.
Carried by the majestic and melancholy soundtrack of Tōru Takemitsu inspired by the themes of Gustav Mahler, joining StudioCanal’s Vintage World Classics their fortieth anniversary edition of Ran is restored in 4K from the original negative, the colour grading supervised by cinematographer Shoji Ueda, and supported by documentaries on Kurosawa and several interviews including Ueda and Harada, the original soundtrack and a hundred-page booklet.
