Akira Kurosawa closes his long career with Ran, a Japanese epic that borrows heavily from Shakespeare’s King Lear but sets it in sixteenth-century Japan, where an aging warlord named Hidetora Ichimonji splits his realm between three sons. It is a film of grand scale, moral collapse, and painterly beauty, and it stands as one of the great achievements of his final decade.
The plot follows Hidetora, a powerful but elderly daimyo, who decides to divide his domain among his three sons. Taro, the eldest, gets the prestigious First Castle and becomes leader of the Ichimonji clan, while Hidetora retains the title of Great Lord. Second son Jiro and third son Saburo are to support Taro, receiving the Second and Third Castles. But Saburo is exiled after criticizing his father’s lecture about unity, and Hidetora’s retainer Tango is exiled for defending him. Taro’s wife Lady Kaede urges her husband to take full control, and when Taro demands Hidetora renounce his title, a furious Hidetora leaves for Jiro’s castle, only to find Jiro using him as a pawn. Hidetora takes over the deserted Third Castle, and later, Taro and Jiro’s forces attack it, killing all of Hidetora’s retinue. Jiro’s general Kurogane kills Taro with an arquebus, and Hidetora falls into madness.
The film’s central tragedy is Hidetora’s wandering, haunted by visions of those he killed in the past. Tango and the court fool Kyoami, still loyal, accompany him across the land. They take refuge in a peasant’s home, only to discover it belongs to Tsurumaru, the brother of Lady Sue, Jiro’s wife. Hidetora had blinded Tsurumaru after massacring his family and left him impoverished. With Taro dead, Jiro becomes the Great Lord, moving into the First Castle. Tango learns Jiro is planning to send assassins after Hidetora, so he rides off to alert Saburo. Lady Kaede seduces Jiro and demands he kill Lady Sue and marry her.
Trailer, via StudiocanalUK.
A Cast of Distinction
Tatsuya Nakadai plays Hidetora with a presence that fills the screen, aged and commanding even as his mind fails. Akira Terao is cold and calculating as Taro, while Jinpachi Nezu gives Jiro a hungry cruelty. Daisuke Ryū plays Saburo with quiet dignity, and Mieko Harada is chilling as Lady Kaede. The extras number around 1,400, and the battle scenes are vast, brutal and meticulously staged.
“In a mad world, only the mad are sane.”
A Final Masterpiece
Ran is Kurosawa’s third encounter with Shakespeare, following Throne of Blood (Macbeth) and The Bad Sleep Well (Hamlet), all acclaimed. This is his last epic, and it earns that title. The color grading shifts from gold to red to black, tracking Hidetora’s descent, and the compositions are painterly, often beautiful even as the story grows darker. The film runs 160 minutes, and not a minute feels wasted.
This is a dense, tragic, visually stunning work, a fitting close to a career spent telling stories of power, betrayal and ruin. It holds a score of 9.7 out of 10.
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