Ran

Dir: Akira Kurosawa

1985

*****

In the mid 1960's, acclaimed British actor Peter O'Toole tried to persuade Akira Kurosawa to film King Lear after watching the directors 1957 epic Throne of Blood – based on the bard’s famous play Macbeth. It does seem strange to have Shakespeare’s plays transported and adapted into feudal Japanese tales but it actually works quite well. Kurosawa thought about O'Toole’s suggestion but he had many projects in mind and set about them – most of which are now considered classics. Kurosawa conceived of the idea that became Ran in the mid-1970s, when he read a parable about the Sengoku-period warlord Mōri Motonari. Motonari was famous for having three sons, all incredibly loyal and talented. Kurosawa began imagining what would have happened had they been bad. Although the film eventually became heavily inspired by Shakespeare's play King Lear, Kurosawa became aware of the details of the play only after he had started pre-planning. According to him, the stories of Mōri Motonari and Lear merged in a way he was never fully able to explain, he finally realised what Peter O'Toole had been trying to tell him. He wrote the script shortly after filming Dersu Uzala in 1975, and then "let it sleep" for seven years. During this time, he painted storyboards of every shot in the and then continued searching for funding. Following his success with 1980's Kagemusha, which he sometimes called a "dress rehearsal" for Ran, Kurosawa was finally able to secure backing from French producer Serge Silberman. Ran (translated as ‘Chaos’ or ‘Turmoil’) has often been cited as among his finest achievements, and with a budget of $11 million, it was the most expensive Japanese film produced up to that time. The film begins during a hunting trip in the mountains where Lord Hidetora Ichimonji is entertaining two old friends with his three sons. Tired and old, Lord Hidetora Ichimonji falls asleep but awakes, telling his sons that he has had a vision that has led him to an important decision. As powerful as the now elderly warlord is, he has decided it is time to divide his kingdom among his three sons: Taro, Jiro, and Saburo. Taro, the eldest, will receive the prestigious First Castle and become leader of the Ichimonji clan, while Jiro and Saburo will be given the Second and Third Castles. Hidetora is to retain the title of Great Lord and Jiro and Saburo are to support Taro. Hidetora lectures his sons about the importance of unity using three arrows (one arrow is easy to snap in half but three arrows bundled together are much more durable). Saburo, however, breaks all three arrows with his knee and calls the lecture foolish. He points out that Hidetora is foolish if he expects his sons to be loyal to him, reminding him that even Hidetora had previously used the most ruthless methods to attain power. Hidetora infers the comments to be subversive, and when his servant Tango comes to Saburo's defense, he exiles both men. Fujimaki, a visiting warlord and Hidetora’s old friend who had witnessed these events agrees with Saburo's frankness, and invites him to take his daughter's hand in marriage. Following the division of Hidetora's lands between his remaining two sons, Taro's wife Lady Kaede begins to urge her husband to usurp control of the entire Ichimonji clan. She is still bitter about the loss of her family; Hidetora's forces killed her family after a land dispute and took over the family's land as his own. When Taro demands Hidetora renounce his title of Great Lord, Hidetora then storms out of the castle and travels to Jiro's castle, only to discover that Jiro is only interested in using Hidetora as a titular pawn. Hidetora and his retinue then leave Jiro's castle as well without any clear destination. Eventually Tango appears with provisions but to no avail. Tango then tells Hidetora of Taro's new decree: death to whoever aids his father. At last Hidetora takes refuge in the Third Castle, abandoned after Saburo's forces followed their lord into exile. Tango does not follow him. Kyoami then jokes about Hidetora's predicament, only to be thrown out of the Third Castle. Shortly thereafter, Hidetora and his samurai retinue are besieged militarily by Taro and Jiro's combined forces. In a short but violent siege, virtually all defenders are slaughtered as the Third Castle is set alight. Solitarily, Hidetora succumbs to madness and wanders away from the burning castle. As Taro and Jiro's forces storm the castle, Taro is killed by a bullet fired by Jiro's general, Kurogane. Hidetora is discovered wandering in the wilderness by his jester Kyoami, and Tango, who is still loyal to him and who stays to assist Hidetora. In his madness, Hidetora is haunted by horrific visions of the people he destroyed in his quest for power. They take refuge in a peasant's home only to discover that the occupant is Tsurumaru, the brother of Lady Sué, Jiro's wife. Tsurumaru had been blinded and left impoverished after Hidetora took over his land and killed his father, a rival lord. With Taro dead, Jiro becomes the Great Lord of the Ichimonji clan, enabling him to move into the First Castle. Upon Jiro's return from battle, Lady Kaede, seemingly unfazed by Taro's death, blackmails Jiro into having an affair with her, and she becomes the power behind his throne. Kaede demands that Jiro kill Lady Sué and marry her instead. Jiro orders Kurogane to do the deed, but he refuses, warning Jiro that Kaede means to ruin the entire Ichimonji clan. Kurogane then warns Sué and Tsurumaru to flee. Tango, still watching over Hidetora with Kyoami, encounters two ronin who had once served as spies for Jiro. Before he kills them both, one of the ronin tells him that Jiro is considering sending assassins after Hidetora. Alarmed, Tango rides off to alert Saburo. Hidetora becomes even more insane and runs off into a volcanic plain with a frantic Kyoami in pursuit. Saburo's army crosses back into Jiro's territory to find him. News also reaches Jiro that two rival lords allied to Saburo (Ayabe and Fujimaki) have also entered the territory, forcing Jiro to hastily mobilize his army. At the field of battle, the two brothers accept a truce, but Saburo becomes alarmed when Kyoami arrives to tell of his father's descent into insanity. Saburo goes with Kyoami to rescue his father and takes 10 warriors with him; Jiro sends several gunners to follow Saburo and ambush them both. Jiro then further orders an attack on Saburo's much smaller force. Saburo's army retreats into the woods for cover and fires on Jiro's forces, frustrating the attack. In the middle of the battle a messenger arrives with news that a rival warlord, Ayabe, is marching on the First Castle, forcing Jiro's army to hastily retreat. Saburo finds Hidetora in the volcanic plain; Hidetora partially recovers his sanity, and begins repairing his relationship with Saburo. However, one of the snipers Jiro had sent after Saburo's small group shoots and kills Saburo. Overcome with grief, Hidetora dies. Fujimaki and his army arrive from their victory only to witness Tango and Kyoami lamenting the death of father and son. Meanwhile, Tsurumaru and Sué arrive at the ruins of a destroyed castle but inadvertently leave behind the flute that Sué previously gave Tsurumaru when he was banished. She gives a picture of Amida Buddha to him for company while she attempts to retrieve the missing flute. It is when she returns to Tsurumaru's hovel to retrieve it that she is ambushed and killed by Jiro's assassin. At the same time, Ayabe's army pursues Jiro's army to the First Castle and commences a siege. When Kurogane hears that Lady Sué has been murdered by one of Jiro's men, Kurogane confronts Kaede. She admits her perfidy and to her plotting to exact revenge against Hidetora and the Ichimonji clan for having destroyed her family years before. Enraged, Kurogane kills Kaede. Jiro, Kurogane, and all Jiro's men subsequently die in the battle with Ayabe's army that follows. A solemn funeral procession is held for Saburo and Hidetora. Meanwhile, left alone in the castle ruins, Tsurumaru accidentally drops, and loses, the Amida Buddha image Sué had given to him. The film ends with a distance shot of Tsurumaru, blind and alone, silhouetted, atop the ruins. The development and conception of the filming of the war scenes in the film were influenced by Kurasawa's opinions on nuclear warfare. According to Michael Wilmington, Kurosawa told him that much of the film was a metaphor for nuclear warfare and the anxiety of the post-Hiroshima age. He believed that, despite all of the technological progress of the 20th century, all people had learned was how to kill each other more efficiently. The director also once said "Hidetora is me", and there is evidence in the film that Hidetora serves as a stand-in for Kurosawa. Ran was the final film of Kurosawa's "third period" (1965–1985), a time where he had difficulty securing support for his pictures, and was frequently forced to seek foreign financial backing. While he had directed over twenty films in the first two decades of his career, he directed just four in these two decades. After directing Red Beard (1965), Kurosawa discovered that he was considered old-fashioned and did not work again for almost five years. He also found himself competing against television, which had reduced Japanese film audiences from a high of 1.1 billion in 1958 to under 200 million by 1975. In 1968 he was fired from the 20th Century Fox epic Tora! Tora! Tora! over what he described as creative differences, but others said was a perfectionism that bordered on insanity. Kurosawa tried to start an independent production group with three other directors, but his 1970 film Dodes'ka-den was a box-office flop and bankrupted the company. Many of his younger rivals boasted that he was finished. A year later, unable to secure any domestic funding and plagued by ill-health, Kurosawa attempted suicide by slashing his wrists. He of course survived but every film he made after that had to be right and one had personal attachment. Kurosawa’s wife died during filming but the director one haulted the shoot for just one day, grieving for just a short time before filming again. Tatsuya Nakadai’s performance as Ichimonji Hidetora is now iconing in the world of cinema, he and especially Mieko Harada as Lady Kaede, relish their characters and bring them to life perfectly. While most of the characters in Ran are portrayed by conventional acting techniques, these two performances are reminiscent of Japanese Noh theater. Noh is a specialized form of Japanese traditional theater requiring highly trained actors and musicians where emotions are primarily conveyed by stylized conventional gestures. The heavy, ghost-like makeup worn by Tatsuya Nakadai's character Hidetora, resembles the emotive masks worn by traditional Noh performers. The body language exhibited by the same character is also typical of Noh theater: long periods of static motion and silence, followed by an abrupt, sometimes violent, change in stance. The character of Lady Kaede is also Noh-influenced. The Noh treatment emphasizes the ruthless, passionate, and single-minded natures of these two characters. It also explores religion, with Buddha mentioned and seen in several scenes. It was an epic tale born of obsession and the last great work of a legendary director. So much work went into it, it’s still hard to imagine that it only cost $11 million, even in 1985. I don’t think Kurosawa made a film that wasn’t a masterpiece, but Ran, while not my favorite of his, is special because it showed the world that the great director still had it in him and his dream was, at last, fulfilled.