RAN d: Akira Kurosawa
Ran (1985)
Direction: Akira Kurosawa
Screenplay: Akira Kurosawa, Masato Ide, and Hideo Oguni
Cast: Tatsuya Nakadai, Akira Terao, Jinpachi Nezu, Daisuke Ryû, Mieko Harada, Yoshiko Miyazaki, Hisashi Igawa
Akira Kurosawa‘s Ran (Winstar Cinema)
Critical cribbing is a term I coined re: the tendency of critics, in all fields, to not engage a work of art directly, but rather to fall back on lazily repeating claims that have been made by others about the thing they are reviewing. Sometimes, these are positive blurbs; other times, these are bits of misinformation repeated endlessly — such as the characters’ names in films like Last Year in Marienbad or Blowup.
A typical example of critical cribbing comes in reviews of Akira Kurosawa’s 27th (of 30) films, Ran (1985). The 160-minute long drama written by Kurosawa, Masato Ide, and Hideo Oguni is certainly a very good one, close to near greatness. Its major flaws are: its characters are never fully developed, and it is laced with some mediocre acting (most notably, the actors who play the three sons) of the sort not found in Kurosawa’s earlier, great films. That said, arguments can and have been made for its greatness, and I will address those later on. But the critical cribbing comes from the almost offhanded way most reviews of the film claim that Ran is a retelling of William Shakespeare’s King Lear. This is simply not so.
Yes, there certainly is an influence, but a retelling implies a certain fidelity to the source. Kurosawa, as he often did, improved on the source material with his own touches — mostly adding background, depth, contrast, and historical ties to Japanese culture. In short, Shakespeare’s play is a parable filled with caricatures. Ran is not. And aside from the fact that these supplements vastly improve Shakespeare’s overrated play, I seriously doubt most of the critics who nonchalantly toss about those claims have even read or seen an adaptation of the source play. Else, Ran’s many divergences from and expansions of the plot would have been apparent.
The film’s title means "chaos," and that’s not a bad description of the action. But the of character development in a realistic way, unlike Kurosawa’s other late epic, Kagemusha, is a serious impediment to claims for Ran’s greatness. In fact, Kagemusha’s strength is its realistic characters and historical fidelity, which make it a better overall film than Ran, even if, like Ran, it is a bit too long. Also, Ran never plumbs within the human psyche the way Seven Samurai, Ikiru, or The Bad Sleep Well do.
On the surface, its plot, like King Lear’s, is simple enough. An aging warlord, Great Lord Hidetora Ichimonji (Tatsuya Nakadai), decides to split his fiefdom in three, giving equal shares to his three sons: Taro (Akira Terao), Jiro (Jinpachi Nezu), and Saburo (Daisuke Ryû). They are to get the first, second, and third family castles. Taro is to be head of the clan while Hidetora remains warlord emeritus.
The two younger brothers are to support Taro, and an ancient Japanese metaphor is used to demonstrate this — Hidetora shows that a single arrow is easily broken, but three together are not. Yet, while he cannot break it with his bare hands, Saburo shows he can break the trio across his knee. While Taro and Jiro flatter their father, Saburo says he is foolish for trusting his sons with power — he is thus banished.
Taro’s wife, Lady Kaede (Mieko Harada), who was a prize won when Hidetora vanquished her own clan and seized their family castle, now unfurls her own plan for revenge, and pushes her husband to castrate his father’s power. Suddenly, the old man senses he made an error. More family intrigue follows.
Where Ran differs most notably from King Lear is in its depth of background. The film is based upon a real-life warlord who had three loyal sons he wanted to bestow his empire to — an inversion of the Lear mythos. Curiously, Kurosawa claimed he only became aware of King Lear midway through the filmmaking process, when others mentioned it to him. He also did not like the fact that Lear’s characters had no credible backstory, and that the three daughters in Lear (Goneril, Regan, and Cordelia) were rather one dimensional. While Taro, Jiro, and Saburo could have been fleshed out more, especially since nearly twenty-five minutes pass in the opening ritual scenes, they are certainly more realistic and well sketched-out characters than Shakespeare’s siblings.
More information about: Akira Kurosawa, Akira Terao, classic movies, Daisuke Ryû, film reviews, Jinpachi Nezu, Mieko Harada, Oscar 1985, Oscar movies, Ran, Tatsuya Nakadai, William Shakespeare
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