Film Review: Ran (1985)
Ran (Directed by Akira Kurosawa, Starring Tatsuya Nakadai, Akira Terao, Jinpachi Nezu, Daisuke Ryu, Mieko Harada, Mansai Nomura, and Shinnosuke Ikehata)
Ran (1985) might be the most overwhelming cinematic experience of my lifetime. Never before had I seen colors on display with such vividness and striking composition, and nothing on film quite compares to the clashing yellow and red bannisters during the assault of Hidetora’s castle. And despite Ran’s visual beauty, it contrastingly paints such a brutal, bleak vision of the world. Definitely doesn’t grant its audience a good time; turns out that nothing is sacrilege in the face of human greed.
Before Ran, I’d only seen Seven Samurai (1957), Rashomon (1950), and Ikiru (1952), but among these four movies, Kurosawa’s judgment of human nature appears by far the darkest and most nihilistic in Ran: perhaps adapting the Bard’s tragedies had finally gotten to Kurosawa’s personal philosophy! The final moment where Tsurumaru (one of the few characters still alive by this point in the film) nearly plunges to death marks one of the most cynical scenes across the epic tragedy. Tsurumaru avoids falling down the ravine, yet he drops his scroll of the Buddha down below. The unstated message is clear: no one, not even God, will rescue the innocent nor guilty alike from man’s malice toward one another.
As a tad bit of background information, it was awesome to learn that when Kurosawa was unable to secure funds in Japan for his later movies, the American and French filmmakers whose works were heavily inspired by those of the legendary director (such as George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola) helped financially back projects like Kagemusha (1980) and Ran.
Unlike the case with most film adaptations of literature, I also welcomed some of the plot changes between King Lear (1606) and Ran. If memory back from my junior year in high school serves me correct, Lear appears largely as a stubborn fool in Shakespeare’s source material, while the wave of misfortunes unleased onto Hidetora comes across as far more deserving. The adaptation's plot slowly reveals the feudal patriarch to be no less bloodthirsty than the sons who usurped him.
Ran was an especially welcomed viewing for another personal reason; I’ve recently been on a quest to come across a movie that will supplant my current number one favorite for the past four years, Ordet (1955). Ran has come to closest by far. It now ranks as my fifth favorite movie ever, only behind Ordet, Apocalypse Now (1979), The Battle of Algiers (1966), and Barry Lyndon (1975), and directly in front of Parasite (2019), Schindler’s List (1993), Badlands (1973), Once Upon a Time in the West (1968), and Dune: Part Two (2024) (the only other time a movie entered within my top ten favorites over the past four years).
Next up, I plan to attend a screening this Friday of the Soviet war film Come and See (1985), which has been the movie highest on my watchlist for multiple years. I never had the opportunity to attend a screening formally hosted by a theater, so I decided to host a screening accessible to the public myself at a local library branch in Buffalo!
If there is any film I expect to satisfy my mission to find a new favorite movie, it will be Come and See.
Other possible strong contenders include Incendies (2010), The Wages of Fear (1953), Sorcerer (1977), Paris, Texas (1984), Army of Shadows (1969), La Commune, 1871 (2000), Threads (1984), Once Upon a Time in America (1984), and Wings of Desire (1987). Here’s to my journey!
