Ran 4K Review (Vintage World Classics)
Where to even begin? Ran, which translates into English as “Chaos”, feels like the culmination of Akira Kurosawa‘s career. It wasn’t his final film, but it was his last in the historical/samurai genre that earned him such worldwide fame, and he clearly decided to make it count. It meant so much to him that he described the film he made before it, Kagemusha (which is great in its own right), as a “dress rehearsal” for Ran. He spent 10 years planning for it, meticulously painting storyboards for every shot in the film – and it was worth the effort.
The plot takes inspiration from Shakespeare’s King Lear, as ageing warlord Ichimonji Hidetora abdicates and divides his kingdom between his three sons Taro, Jiro and Saburo. Naively trusting that they will rule between them and look after him in his old age, he’s swiftly disillusioned when Taro and Jiro burn his castle and exile him. Wandering the wilderness with only his fool Kyoami for company, he descends into madness as his kingdom descends into war.
Ran was the most expensive film Kurosawa made, and it’s eye-opening to watch it again in an era when $300 million blockbusters routinely come out looking like cheap rubbish because the people working on them were crunched to within an inch of their lives. This is what an expensive movie should look like. Kurosawa may have been old himself and reportedly going blind by the time he started work, but you’d never know to look at the film; when Hidetora, having lost his mind, staggers out of the blazing ruins of his collapsing castle, it truly takes your breath away. It really goes to show what a difference it makes when a director has enough time to prepare and knows exactly what they want the finished film to look like.
Not that all this would count for much if the storytelling weren’t up to scratch, but come on, this is a Kurosawa movie. He knew what he was doing. This is true tragedy, where a great (though definitely not good) man makes a terrible mistake and pays dearly for it. Hidetora was a tyrant who used the enormous power he wielded to be cruel and vindictive, and the tragedy is in seeing him brought so low throughout the film. He does deserve what comes his way, but the chaos of the title as his kingdom tears itself apart is still sincerely hard to watch.
Tatsuya Nakadai drew from Noh, a form of traditional Japanese theatre, for his performance, giving the tragedy the sense of theatricality and grandeur it needs to work properly; Peter’s performance as Kyoami the fool, by contrast, is just heartbreaking. Through him, we see the innocence caught up in and destroyed by Hidetora’s fall, and the full horror of what’s happening to the country hits home as a result.
It all ends with an astonishing final shot that’s surely one of the bleakest in cinema history. This assuredly isn’t the crowd-pleasing, proto-blockbuster epic style of Seven Samurai, but something that feels much older. Kurosawa channelled Shakespeare for this magnificent film, but the inevitable, apocalyptic nature of its tragedy feels Greek as much as it does Elizabethan. He tapped into something deep and dark that goes right to the root of the human psyche, and it’s almost overwhelming in its power. Ran is still a monumental work from one of the greatest filmmakers to ever live.
★★★★★
Released on 4K on 21st July / Tatsuya Nakadai, Mieko Harada, Peter / Dir: Akira Kurosawa / StudioCanal UK / 15
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