   #copyright

Ran (film)

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Films

                      乱
   Ran
     Directed by   Akira Kurosawa
     Produced by   Katsumi Furukawa
                   Serge Silberman
                   Masato Hara
     Written by    Akira Kurosawa
                   Hideo Oguni
                   Masato Ide
      Starring     Tatsuya Nakadai
                   Mieko Harada
      Music by     Tôru Takemitsu
   Distributed by  Greenwich Film Productions
                   Herald Ace Inc.
                   Nippon Herald Films
   Release date(s) 01 June 1985 (Japan)
                   20 December 1985 (USA)
    Running time   160 minutes
      Language     Japanese
       Budget      $12,000,000
            All Movie Guide profile
                 IMDb profile

   Ran ( Japanese: 乱, "chaos", "wretchedness") is a 1985 film written and
   directed by Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa. It is a Jidaigeki
   (Japanese period drama) depicting the fall of Hidetora Ichimonji (
   Tatsuya Nakadai), an aging Sengoku-era warlord who decides to abdicate
   as ruler in favour of his three sons. His kingdom slowly disintegrates
   as each son struggles for power, murdering rivals and laying waste to
   the land. Hidetora goes insane after watching his retainers slaughtered
   in an epic massacre, the centerpiece of the film. As the kingdom
   crumbles and rival warlords move in for the kill, the Ichimonji clan
   collapses in a frenzy of revenge and betrayal as old scores are finally
   settled. The story is based on legends of the daimyo Mori Motonari, as
   well as on the Shakespearean tragedy King Lear.

   Ran was Kurosawa's last great epic. With a budget of $12 million, it
   was the most expensive Japanese film ever produced. Kurosawa would
   direct three other films before he died, but none would be on so large
   a scale. The film was hailed for its powerful images and use of colour
   – costume designer Emi Wada won an Academy Award for Costume Design for
   her work on Ran. The distinctive Gustav Mahler inspired film score,
   written by Toru Takemitsu, plays in isolation with ambient sound muted
   (most notably during the battle at the third castle).

Plot

   Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

   According to Stephen Prince, Ran is "a relentless chronicle of base
   lust for power, betrayal of the father by his sons, and pervasive wars
   and murders that destroy all the main characters." It is a tale about
   the downfall of the once-powerful Ichimonji clan after its patriarch
   Hidetora decides to give control of his kingdom up to 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. Jiro and Saburo are
   to support Taro, and Hidetora illustrates this by using a bundle of
   arrows. Hidetora will remain the titular leader and retain the title of
   Great Lord. Saburo criticizes the logic of Hidetora's plan. Hidetora
   achieved power through treachery, he reminds his father, yet he
   foolishly expects his sons to be loyal to him. Hidetora mistakes these
   comments for a threat and when his servant Tango comes to Saburo's
   defense, he banishes both of them.

   Following Hidetora's abdication, Taro's wife Lady Kaede begins pushing
   for Taro to take direct control of the Ichimonji clan, and engineers a
   rift between Taro and Hidetora. Kaede is a vengeful, manipulative woman
   whose family was slaughtered by Hidetora in his own rise to power.
   Matters come to a head when Hidetora kills one of Taro's guards who was
   threatening his fool Kyoami. When Taro subsequently demands that
   Hidetora renounce his title of Great Lord, Hidetora storms out of the
   castle. He then travels to Jiro's castle, only to discover that Jiro is
   more interested in using Hidetora as a pawn in his own power play.
   During this time Hidetora runs into Jiro's wife, Lady Sué. Like Kaede,
   her family was murdered by Hidetora, but she had embraced Buddhism and
   forgiven him. Finally Hidetora journeys to the third castle, which had
   been abandoned after Saburo's forces followed their lord into exile,
   where he and his retinue are ambushed by Taro and Jiro. Hidetora's
   bodyguards and concubines are slaughtered, the castle is set on fire,
   and Hidetora is left to commit seppuku (ritual suicide). However, much
   to his dismay, Hidetora's sword has been broken and he cannot commit
   seppuku. Instead of killing himself, Hidetora goes mad and escapes from
   the burning castle. As Taro and Jiro's forces storm the castle, Jiro's
   general Kurogane assassinates Taro.

   Hidetora is discovered wandering in the wilderness by Tango and Kyoami.
   They join Saburo, and remain the only people loyal to Hidetora. They
   take refuge in a peasant's home, only to discover that the peasant is a
   man named Tsurumaru, the brother of Lady Sué. Hidetora had ordered him
   blinded years ago.

   Upon his return from battle, Jiro begins having an affair with Lady
   Kaede, who quickly becomes the power behind his throne. She demands
   that Jiro leave his wife for her. When Jiro offers to divorce his wife
   Lady Sué and marry her instead, she also demands that he have Sué
   killed. Kurogane is given the order to kill Sué, but he publicly
   disobeys and warns Jiro not to trust his wife. Meanwhile, Hidetora's
   party hides out in the remains of a castle that Hidetora had destroyed
   in an earlier war. At one point Tango kills two of Hidetora's
   treacherous councillors. Hidetora's madness causes him to have
   nightmares about all the people he murdered in his quest for power. The
   madness finally becomes too much for him to bear; eluding his servants,
   he flees back into the wilderness.

   With Hidetora's location a mystery, Saburo's army crosses back into the
   kingdom to find him. Worried about his brothers' actions and mindful of
   his alliance with rival warlords who want the Ichimonji lands for
   themselves, Jiro hastily mobilizes his much larger army to stop them.
   The two forces meet on the field of Hachiman. Sensing a major battle,
   Saburo's new patron, a warlord named Fujimaki, marches to the border.
   Another rival warlord, Ayabe, also shows up with his own army. After
   arranging a truce with Jiro, Saburo rides off to find Hidetora. But
   Jiro orders an attack anyway, and his forces are decimated by arquebus
   fire from Saburo's army. In the middle of the battle, word reaches Jiro
   and Kurogane that Ayabe has slipped away and is marching on the First
   Castle. Jiro's army promptly disintegrates and flees back to the
   castle. During the battle against Ayabe's forces, Kurogane confronts
   Lady Kaede about her actions; she admits that she herself had planned
   for events to transpire this way all along; Kurogane kills her. Jiro,
   Kurogane, and Jiro's men all die in the battle that follows. Lady Sué
   is also finally murdered by one of Jiro's men.

   In the end, Saburo finally discovers Hidetora, hiding in a cave. The
   two are reunited and Hidetora comes to his senses. However, Saburo is
   promptly killed by an assassin that Jiro had sent out earlier. Overcome
   with grief, Hidetora finally dies, marking the end of the Ichimonji
   clan. The film ends with a shot of Tsurumaru, standing alone on top of
   a ruined castle while Saburo's army mourns for their fallen leader.
   Tsurumaru is left wandering blindly in the mountains; presumably he
   will soon either starve or fall to his death.

Background

          "When I read that three arrows together are invincible, that's
          not true. I started doubting, and that's when I started
          thinking: the house was prosperous and the sons were courageous.
          What if this fascinating man had bad sons?"
          —Akira Kurosawa, July 1986.

   Kurosawa first got the idea that would become Ran in the mid-1970s,
   when he read a parable about the Sengoku-era warlord Mori Motonari.
   Motonari was famous for having three sons, all incredibly loyal and
   talented in their own right. Kurosawa began imagining what would have
   happened had they been bad. Despite the similarities to Shakespeare's
   play King Lear, Kurosawa only became aware of the similarities after he
   had started pre-planning. According to him, the stories of Mori
   Motonari and Lear merged in a way he was never fully able to explain.
   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 film (The resulting collection of
   images was published with the screenplay and is available as an extra
   on the Criterion Collection DVD release of the film) and 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.

   Kurosawa once said that "Hidetora is me," and there is some evidence in
   the film that Hidetora serves as a stand-in for Kurosawa. Hidetora's
   crest is the sun and moon, and the Chinese character of Kurosawa's
   first name "Akira" is combined from the characters of the sun and moon.
   Roger Ebert agrees, arguing that Ran "may be as much about Kurosawa's
   life as Shakespeare's play." 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, the third period saw him direct just four.
   After directing 1965's Red Beard, 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 gutted
   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 called 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 Dodesukaden 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. Though
   he survived, his misfortune would continue to plague him until the late
   1980s. By the time he directed Ran, he was almost completely blind; to
   make matters worse, his wife of forty years, Yôko Yaguchi, would die
   during production.

King Lear

   "King Lear and the Fool in the Storm" by William Dyce.
   Enlarge
   " King Lear and the Fool in the Storm" by William Dyce.

          "What has always troubled me about 'King Lear' is that
          Shakespeare gives his characters no past. ... In Ran, I have
          tried to give Lear a history."
          — Akira Kurosawa

   While Kurosawa said that Ran is not a direct adaptation of King Lear,
   he did admit to being influenced by the play and incorporated many
   elements from it into Ran. Both follow an aging warlord who decides to
   divide up his kingdom among his offspring. In place of Lear's
   daughters, Hidetora has three sons — Taro, Jiro, and Saburo (who
   correspond to Goneril, Regan and Cordelia respectively). In both, the
   warlord banishes anyone who disagrees with him — in Lear it is the Earl
   of Kent and in Ran it is both Tango and Saburo. The conflict in both is
   that the lord's children ultimately turn against him, though Hidetora's
   sons are far more ruthless than Goneril and Regan. Both King Lear and
   Ran ultimately end with the death of the entire family, including the
   hapless Lord.

   However, there are some crucial differences between the two. King Lear
   is a play about undeserved suffering and Lear himself is at worst a
   fool. Hidetora, by contrast, has been a cruel warrior for most of his
   life, a man who ruthlessly murdered men, women, and children to achieve
   his goals. In the film, Lady Kaede, Lady Sué, and Tsurumaru were all
   victims of Hidetora. Whereas in "King Lear" the character of Gloucester
   had his eyes gouged out by Lear's enemies, in Ran it was Hidetora
   himself who gave the order to do the same to Tsurumaru. Kurosawa also
   expanded the role of the Fool into a major character (Kyoami), while
   also making him sexually ambiguous (he was played by "Peter", an
   entertainer well-known for cross-dressing). His other major addition
   was Lady Kaede, who is the polar opposite of Kyoami. Although he
   probably based her on Shakespeare's Goneril, she is a much more complex
   and important character in the film.

Production

   Ran was Kurosawa's last epic film and by far his most expensive. At the
   time, its budget of $12 million made it the most expensive Japanese
   film in history. The film used approximately 1,400 extras, which
   required 1,400 uniforms and suits of armor to be fabricated. These were
   designed by costume designer Emi Wada and Kurosawa, and were hand-made
   by master tailors over more than two years. The film also used 200
   horses, a number of which had to be imported from the United States.
   Kurosawa loved filming in lush and expansive locations, and most of Ran
   was shot amidst the mountains and plains of Mount Aso, Japan's largest
   active volcano. Kurosawa was also granted permission to shoot at two of
   the country's most famous landmarks, the ancient castles at Kumamoto
   and Himeji. For the castle of Lady Sué's family, he used the ruins of
   the Azusa castle. Hidetora's third castle, which was burned to the
   ground, was actually a real building which Kurosawa built on the slopes
   of Mount Fuji. No miniatures were used for that segment, and Tatsuya
   Nakadai had to do the scene where Hidetora flees the castle in one
   take. Apparently, Kurosawa also wanted to include a scene that required
   an entire field to be sprayed gold; it was filmed but Kurosawa cut it
   out of the final film during editing.

   Kurosawa would often shoot a scene with three cameras simultaneously,
   each using different lenses and angles. Many long-shots were employed
   throughout the film and very few close-ups. On several occasions he
   used static cameras and suddenly brought the action into frame, rather
   than using the camera to track the action. He also used jump cuts to
   progress certain scenes, changing the pace of the action for filmic
   effect.

   Akira Kurosawa's wife of 39 years, Yôko Yaguchi, died during the
   production of this film. He halted filming for just one day to mourn
   before resuming work on the picture.

Acting style

   Acting performances in Ran were greatly influenced by Japanese Noh
   theatre. This is exemplified in the heavy, ghost-like makeup worn by
   Tatsuya Nakadai's charater, Hidetora, which resembles the emotive masks
   worn by traditional Noh performers. The body language exhibited by the
   same character is also typical of Noh theatre: long periods of static
   motion and silence, followed by an abrupt, sometimes violent, change in
   stance. The character of Lady Kaede is also a Noh influenced
   performance. The traditional performances of these two
   characters--contrasting with the naturalistic performances of the
   majority of the cast, lead some Westerners to see Lady Kaede as
   mentally unstable, just as we rightly see Hidetora. However, Lady Kaede
   is actually fully in her right mind, making her one of the most devious
   characters in modern cinema.

Cast and characters

   Ran was a late Kurosawa film and so it lacked many stalwarts of earlier
   Kurosawa films, such as Takashi Shimura and Toshiro Mifune. The
   description of Hidetora in the first script was originally based on
   Mifune, who had been estranged from Kurosawa since Red Beard. However,
   for various reasons the part ultimately went to Tatsuya Nakadai, who
   had played several supporting characters in previous Kurosawa films, as
   well as the thief in Kagemusha. But because the character had been
   written for Mifune, Nakadai found himself playing Toshiro Mifune
   playing Hidetora. Two other Kurosawa veterans in Ran were Hisashi Igawa
   (Kurogane) and Masayuki Yui (Tango), who were both in Dreams and
   Madadayo (Yuki had also been in Kagemusha and Igawa would later appear
   in Rhapsody in August). Many of the other actors had also appeared in
   other late Kurosawa films, such as Jinpachi Nezu (Jiro) and Daisuke Ryu
   (Saburo) in Kagemusha. Others had not, but would go on to work with
   Kurosawa again, such as Akira Terao (Taro) and Mieko Harada (Lady
   Kaede) in Dreams. He also brought in two comedians for lighter moments:
   the transvestite Shinnosuke "Peter" Ikehata as Hidetora's fool Kyoami
   and Hitoshi Ueki as rival warlord Nobuhiro Fujimaki.

Themes

Chaos

          "A terrible scroll of Hell is shown depicting the fall of the
          castle. There are no real sounds as the scroll unfolds like a
          daytime nightmare. It is a scene of human evildoing, the way of
          the demonic Ashura, as seen by a Buddha in tears. The music
          superimposed on these pictures is, like the Buddha's heart,
          measured in beats of profound anguish, the chanting of a melody
          full of sorrow that begins like sobbing and rises gradually as
          it is repeated, like karmic cycles, then finally sounds like the
          wailing of countless Buddhas."
          — Ran Screenplay

   As the title suggests, chaos occurs repeatedly in the film; in many
   scenes Kurosawa foreshadows it by filming approaching cumulonimbus
   clouds, which finally break into a raging storm during the castle
   massacre. Hidetora is an autocrat whose powerful presence keeps the
   countryside unified and at peace. His abdication frees up other
   characters, like Jiro and Lady Kaede, to pursue their own agendas,
   which they do so with absolute ruthlessness. While the title is almost
   certainly an allusion to Hidetora's decision to abdicate (and the
   resulting mayhem that follows), there are other examples of the
   disorder of life, what Michael Sragow calls a "trickle-down theory of
   anarchy." Kurogane's assassination of Taro ultimately elevates Lady
   Kaede to power and turns him into an unwilling pawn in her schemes.
   Saburo's decision to rescue Hidetora ultimately draws in two rival
   warlords and leads to an unwanted battle between Jiro and Saburo,
   culminating in the destruction of the Ichimonji clan.

   The ultimate example of chaos is the absence of God. When Hidetora sees
   Lady Sué, a devout Buddhist and the most religious character in the
   film, he tells her that "Buddha is gone from this miserable world."
   Sué, despite her belief in love and forgiveness, eventually has her
   head cut off. When Kyoami claims that the gods either don't exist or
   are the cause of human suffering, Tango responds that "[The gods] can't
   save us from ourselves." Kurosawa has repeated the point, saying that
   "humanity must face life without relying on God or Buddha." The last
   shot of the film shows Tsurumaru standing on top of the ruins of his
   family castle. Unable to see, he stumbles towards the edge until he
   almost falls over. He drops the scroll of the Buddha his sister had
   given him and just stands there, "a blind man at the edge of a
   precipice, bereft of his god, in a darkening world." This may symbolize
   the modern concept of the death of God, as Kurosawa also claimed that
   "Man is perfectly alone... [Tsurumaru] represents modern humanity."

Nihilism

          "What I was trying to get at in Ran, and this was there from the
          script stage, was that the gods or God or whoever it is
          observing human events is feeling sadness about how human beings
          destroy each other, and powerlessness to affect human beings'
          behaviour."
          — Akira Kurosawa

   In addition to its chaotic elements, Ran also contains a strong element
   of nihilism, which is present from the opening sequence where Hidetora
   mercilessly hunts down a boar to the last scene with Tsurumaru. Roger
   Ebert describes "Ran as a 20th century film set in medieval times, in
   which an old man can arrive at the end of his life having won all his
   battles, and foolishly think he still has the power to settle things
   for a new generation. But life hurries ahead without any respect for
   historical continuity; his children have their own lusts and furies.
   His will is irrelevant, and they will divide his spoils like dogs
   tearing at a carcass."

   This marked a radical departure from Kurosawa's earlier films, many of
   which were filled with hope and redemption. Even Kagemusha, though it
   chronicled the destruction of the samurai class, had ended on a note of
   regret rather than despair. By contrast, the world of Ran is a
   Hobbesian world, where life is an endless cycle of suffering and
   everybody is a villain or a victim, and in many cases both. Heroes like
   Saburo may do the right thing, but in the end they are doomed as well.
   Unlike other Kurosawa heroes, like Kikuchiyo from Seven Samurai or
   Watanabe from Ikiru, who die performing great acts, Saburo dies
   pointlessly. Conniving characters like Jiro or Lady Kaede are never
   given a chance to atone and are predestined to a life of wickedness and
   ultimately violent death as well.

Warfare

          "All the technological progress of these last years has only
          taught human beings how to kill more of each other faster. It's
          very difficult for me to retain a sanguine outlook on life under
          such circumstances."
          — Akira Kurosawa

   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. In Ran, the vehicle for apocalyptic
   destruction is the arquebus, an early firearm that was introduced to
   Japan in the 1500s. Arquebuses revolutionized samurai warfare, and the
   age of swords and single combat warriors fell rapidly by the wayside.
   Now, samurai warfare would be characterized by massive faceless armies
   engaging each other at a distance. Kurosawa had already dealt with this
   theme in his previous film Kagemusha, with the destruction of the
   Takeda cavalry by the arquebuses of the Oda and Tokugawa clans. In Ran,
   the Battle of Hachiman Field is a perfect illustration of this new kind
   of warfare. Saburo's arquebusers annihilate Jiro's cavalry and drive
   off his infantry by engaging them from the woods, where the cavalry are
   unable to venture. Similarly, Saburo's assassination by a sniper also
   shows how individual heroes have no place on a modern battlefield.
   Kurosawa also illustrates this new warfare with his camera. Instead of
   focusing on the warring armies, he frequently sets the focal plane
   beyond the action, so that in the film they appear as abstract
   entities.

Reception

   Though Ran opened to generally positive reviews, it was a modestly
   successful film. It premiered on June 1 in Japan and earned only
   ¥2,510,000,000 ($12 million), just enough to break even. Its U.S.
   release six months later earned it another $2–3 million, and a
   re-release in 2000 netted $337,112.

   Ran had similar luck in the awards categories. Ran was completed too
   late to be entered at Cannes and first premiered at the Tokyo
   International Film Festival. Kurosawa skipped the film's premiere,
   angering many in the Japanese film industry (The Tokyo International
   Film Festival was Japan's first); as a result Ran was not submitted as
   Japan's entry for the Best Foreign Language Film category of the
   Oscars. Serge Silberman then tried to get it nominated as a French
   co-production but failed. However, American director Sidney Lumet
   helped organize a successful campaign to have Kurosawa nominated as
   Best Director.

   Ran was also nominated for Art Direction, Cinematography, and Costume
   Design (which it won). It was also unsuccessfully nominated for a
   Golden Globe for Best Foreign Film. In Japan, Ran was conspicuously not
   nominated for "Best Picture" at the Awards of the Japanese Academy.
   However, it won two Prizes for Best Art Direction and Best Music Score
   and received four other nominations, for Best Cinematography, Best
   Lighting, Best Sound, and Best Supporting Actor ( Hitoshi Ueki, who
   played Saburo's patron Lord Fujimaki). Ran also won two awards from the
   British Academy of Film and Television Arts, for Best Foreign Language
   Film and Best Make Up Artist and was nominated for Best Cinematography,
   Best Costume Design, Best Production Design, and Best Screenplay -
   Adapted.

   Today the film is regarded as one of Kurosawa's greatest masterpieces,
   along with Seven Samurai and Ikiru.
   Retrieved from " http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ran_%28film%29"
   This reference article is mainly selected from the English Wikipedia
   with only minor checks and changes (see www.wikipedia.org for details
   of authors and sources) and is available under the GNU Free
   Documentation License. See also our Disclaimer.
