Film Review
Buoyed up by the success of
Kagemusha
(1980), director Akira Kurosawa was finally able to realise a film that
he had been hoping to make for over a decade, a lavish epic to rival
the spectacle and grandeur of his earlier samurai films. It was
in the mid-1970s that Kurosawa first conceived
Ran, inspired by a 16th century
Japanese legend about a warlord, Mori Motonari, of the Sengoku period
who divided his kingdom between his three sons. As he developed
the storyline, Kurosawa was struck by its similarity with Shakespeare's
King Lear, and so what started
out as feudal Japan's equivalent of
The
Godfather ended up as an inspired reworking of the Bard's tragic
play. At the time he made the film, Kurosawa was 75 years old, so
it is tempting to identify him with the central character of the film,
Hidetora Ichimonji, an aging warlord overly preoccupied with his
legacy.
Despite his reputation (acquired in the early 1950s) as one of the
greatest, if not the greatest, of all filmmakers, Akira Kurosawa's
career had floundered in the early 1970s after the disastrous failure
of
Dodesukaden (1970).
It was only with the support of 20th Century Fox that he was able to
make his big comeback with
Kagemusha,
and it was thanks to a French film producer, Serge Silberman, that he
managed to make
Ran, his one
and only Franco-Japanese production. The film cost 12 million
dollars to make, the most expensive Japanese film at that time.
Around 1400 extras and 200 horses were required for the film's
ambitious action sequences, some of the most impressive ever to feature
in a Japanese film. Kurosawa admitted that, of all the films he
made, this was the most exhausting. When his wife of 39 years,
Yoko Yaguchi, died during the filming, production was suspended for
just one day. The capricious weather (in particular the wind and
the fog) on the Mount Fuji location was to prove far more of a
challenge.
Kurosawa is renowned for his love of western culture and the skill with
which he brings western influences into his films.
Ran is the third of his films to
have been inspired by Shakespeare. The other two were
Throne of Blood (1957) and
The Bad Sleep Well (1960),
which were respectively reworkings of the Bard's
Macbeth and
Hamlet. The great American
film directors (principally John Ford) were another important
influence, as can be seen in almost every action sequence of Kurosawa's
samurai films.
Ran is
perhaps nearer in style to traditional Japanese cinema than most of the
director's previous work. Apart from the ferocious battle
scenes, which were filmed using Kurosawa's usual three-camera approach,
most of the film consists of long static takes with virtually no camera
movement and very unobtrusive editing (achieving a look that is closer
in style to that of Kurosawa's nearest contemporary, Kenji
Mizoguchi). This gives the film a strangely detached feel - the
persective is that of a divine power looking down on man's folly from a
great height, unable to intervene and change anything.
The film is also clearly influenced by the Noh aesthetic of traditional
Japanese theatre. This is most evident in the exaggerated make up
of the principal character Hidetora, who is superbly played by the
distinguished stage and screen actor Tatsuya Nakadai. At the
time, Nakadai was in his early 50s (and looked younger), so an
elaborate make up job was required to age him so that he could
convincingly resemble a man two decades his senior. Nakadai was
one of Kurosawa's favourite actors - he had starred in the director's
previous film
Kagemusha and
had made a memorable appearance as the bad guy in two of his earlier
samurai films,
Yojimbo (1961) and
Sanjuro (1962). The fool
to Nakadai's Lear is amusingly played by Pîtâ, a successful
Japanese pop star and female impersonator who is better known by the
name Peter - he gives the film its few moments of comic relief.
Ran's other standout performance is
provided by Mieko Harada, who is magnificent as the utterly venomous
Lady Kaede, a close cousin no doubt of Isuzu Yamada's Lady Washizu in
Throne of Blood. Harada
accentuates the single-minded ruthlessness of her character by adopting
an expressionistic style of acting that is very close to Noh.
This is at its most effective in the unforgettable Noh-like sequence in
which Kaede threatens her brother-in-law Jiro with a sword and then
seduces him, like an eagle swooping down on its prey.
Ran owes much of its visual
impact to its striking locations, which include two of Japan's most
important historic landmarks, the ancient castles of Himeji and
Kumamoto. A third castle was built especially for the film, from
plastic and wood, on the slopes of Mount Fuji. The ruins of Azusa
castle provided the location for the sacked castle of Lady
Sué. The splendour of the setting is reinforced by Toru
Takemitsu's haunting score, which was apparently inspired by the music
of the Austrian composer Gustav Mahler and conveys an aching sense of
loss throughout the film. As is related in Chris Marker's
revealing documentary on the making of
Ran,
A.K.
(1985), Kurosawa had part of a
wheat field painted gold for one short scene, but the result was not
what the director had hoped for and the scene was cut.
Ran translates approximately
as
chaos, and it is hard to think of a better title for a film which
concerns itself with the consequences of man's untameable lust for
power and predilection for destruction. Although his films often
depicted graphic violence, Kurosawa abhorred bloodshed and
Ran, like many of his previous
films, makes a powerful anti-war statement. At one point, one of
the characters remarks: "In a mad world, only the mad are sane" - an
allusion to Kurosawa's previous film
I Live in Fear (1955), in which
the director expresses his deepest and darkest anxieties over the
prospect of a nuclear holocaust. The fierce orgy of blood and
fire that ignite the film in its most dramatic sequences bears testimony
to man's penchant for self-destruction and presents a horrifying vision
of his ultimate fate unless he can tame his enthusiasm for senseless
killing.
Ran may have pleased the
critics but it was from being a commercial success; in fact it barely
broke even. The film was nominated for four Oscars in 1986 (in
categories that included Best Director and Best Cinematography) but
only won an award for its Costume Design. As a consolation prize,
Kurosawa was rewarded with an Honorary Oscar. The film fared
better at the 1987 BAFTAs, where it took the award for the Best Foreign
Film. Today, the film is widely regarded as one of Kurosawa's
finest achievements - a cautionary tale on the folly of war which is
all the more potent for the film's vibrant use of colour.
Kurosawa did make three films after this, but
Ran was destined to be his last
masterpiece, a triumphant last hurrah in a glorious career.
© James Travers 2012
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Next Akira Kurosawa film:
Drunken Angel (1948)