Ran ***** (1985, Tatsuya Nakadai, Akira Terao, Jinpachi Nezu, Mieko Harada, Pîtâ) – Classic Movie Review 3733

Director Akira Kurosawa’s thrilling, marvellous-looking 1985 version of William Shakespeare’s play King Lear is transposed to 16th-century feudal Japan, with the senile old man now a warlord called Lord Hidetora Ichimonji (Tatsuya Nakadai) who cedes his kingdom to the eldest of his three sons, Taro (Akira Terao), and starts a power struggle between the brothers. The youngest son Saburo disagrees with the warlord, who banishes him, and the two selfish ones turn against the old man.

Mieko Harada.

Ran is a complex historical epic of enormous power and vision, with magnificent visuals, stupendous battle scenes and superb performances, especially from Mieko Harada as Lady Kaede, the evil wife of one of the sons, and Pîtâ as a creepy cross-dressing Fool, Kyoami. The movie is brilliantly helmed and commanded by the 75-year-old maestro director on inspired form in his final masterpiece (though he made three other films).

‘Ran’ signifies the ‘chaos’ into which the warlord plunges the world, reflecting a chaos Kurosawa sees everywhere in the world.

Ran deserved more recognition than its sole Oscar for best costume design (Emi Wada). It took two years to make the several hundred costumes by hand. However, it did win the 1987 Bafta award for Best Foreign Language Film, and another for Best Make Up Artist. The London Critics Circle Film Awards voted it Foreign Language Film of the Year in 1987 and Kurosawa Director of the Year.

See also Kurosawa’s version of William Shakespeare’s play Macbeth, Throne of Blood (1957), and Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai (1954).

Ran has been remastered into a digital 4K HD scan by the French film services laboratory Éclair under the supervision of StudioCanal and was released on Blu-ray in the US on May 2 2016. The restoration is based on an original negative and much of the remastering work was done manually, frame by frame with the original director of photography, Masaharu Ueda, on hand to approve the colour grading.

© Derek Winnert 2016 Classic Movie Review 3733

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