Ran

Rating:
Summary: A rich experience worth viewing over and over again
Review: This is a magnificent movie. It is visually beautiful - the colors and the way the shots are framed are stunning. The visuals are controlled in ways that add to the poetic power of the story. I do not speak Japanese, but the sound of the language combined with the musical score also adds to the intensity of this movie. The subtitles are good, but I am sure that those who understand Japanese get even more from this story.

This is not a film of Shakespeare's "King Lear". Rather, it is an adaptation and is based on the underlying themes of the play. It is not important for me to list the differences between the play and the movie, it is just important that a first time viewer not expect the Shakespearian story. If you know the play you will recognize aspects of the movie and enjoy the ways in which Kurosawa adapted the story to his own and Japanese sensibilities. It may nod to Shakespeare, but Kurosawa makes this his story.

The costumes, music, and acting are superlative. For me, the trademark Kurosawa battle scenes are more wonderful here than usual. This is a masterpiece by a filmmaking virtuoso who is also a sensitive enough artist to make a spectacular movie that is also poetic, humorous and heart breaking, tender and brutal as well images that are beautiful and others that are hideous.

This isn't light viewing or mind candy, but it has so much to offer that it is worth watching and learning from over and over again.

Rating:
Summary: The Greatest Adaptation of Shakespeare to Film
Review: "Ran" (Chaos) is the greatest cinematic adaptation of Shakespeare and a masterpiece in its own right. In adapting the broad scenario of "King Lear" to a setting in Sixteenth Century Japan, Akira Kurosawa felt free to manipulate it to his own purposes, leading to a film that is perhaps even more bleak than the play.

First and foremost "Ran" is a visually stunning film, unencumbered by the received tradition of Shakespearean language, which never translates well onto the cinema screen, he has allowed the scenario to develop into images that are beautiful and horrific. Filmed on the slopes of Mount Fuji there is a sense of unreality, or nightmare about the whole epic, as though it is taking place in a mythic space, at once recognisable and alien. For a director best known for his black and white movies ("Seven Samurai", "Rashomon"), Kurosawa surprisingly uses color to breathtaking virtuoso effect. The scenes of soldiers flooding in waves across the volcanic wasteland of Mount Fuji carrying vivid blue, red or yellow flags are amongst the most extraordinary ever filmed. The battle scenes shock and astonish, not least because Kurosawa's use of sound is so exquisite and original; many of the most horrendous images of battle are shown without sound effects with only an elegiac musical accompaniment. Far from sanitising them, the effect is to shock you out of the viewing habits formed watching so many other "war" movies.

Yet "Ran" is so much more than a broad epic, or war movie. The more intimate scenes are carried off with understated conviction, the sly hypocrisy hidden behind formality and convention is conveyed in highly poised and stylised interior shots. This film can be both visceral (prepare yourself for the beheading of Lady Kaede: as visually explosive as anything by Tarantino, and set within a film that is more than mere surface) and restrained, depending on the nature of the scene. There are moments of quiet and tenderness that resonate long after the film had ended.

It is odd that so few successful films have been made from Shakespeare. The pre-eminent playwright of the western canon has translated beautifully into opera and stage directors can continually find fresh things to say about the plays themselves, yet in general film had been hopelessly incapable of doing anything of note with Shakespeare. Think of the ghastly declamatory rhetoric of Laurence Olivier in "Henry V", or the inane pop video that Baz Lurmann made from "Romeo and Juliet", not to mention Kenneth Brannagh's tediously self-important "Hamlet". Somehow Kurosawa succeeds where all these others fail. His earlier "Throne of Blood" was a beautifully realised adaptation of "Macbeth" to the Samurai period in Japan: "Ran" builds on that achievement and surpasses it. Perhaps the fact that Kurosawa was Japanese allowed him more creative license to work with Shakespeare, able to approach it simply as valid material for film making, and not as the shibboleth that it is to western artists.

In Ran we have the late masterpiece of one of the greatest and most important film makers. It is a distilled and precise work, powerful, visceral, contemplative, epic and intimate. In short this is film making on a par with the greatest art. Ran shows us what mainstream film making can achieve, but so rarely does.

Rating:
Summary: Kurosawa does David Lean
Review: I read "King Lear" several years ago and I confess that I got lost from time to time in the play. I believe that I understand it a lot better now that I have seen "Ran". This is one of those film epics ala "Dr. Zhivago" or "Lawrence of Arabia" with the added bonus that Shakespeare helped with the screenplay. I might get into trouble with that last comment. After all, the language was a little more down to earth but still on a level well above your typical epic. This foreign film won an Academy Award for best costume design and it's not hard to see why. The only problem is, nobody ever seems to get theirs dirty except when they're killed. There are a number of battle scenes that bring to mind the old film trailer line..A CAST OF THOUSANDS. The color and quality of the film are superb on this version at least until the last part where it darkened rather noticeably. Although it's 160 minutes in length, I have no complaints about that fact. I do have to admit that I had to take a break a time or two to run some errands but the story line was well developed so I had no trouble picking up where I left off. This would have been an impressive movie to see on the big screen. Like the play, this is a tragedy in which many characters are killed but the motivation behind it all is the heart of it's story.

As I always do with foreign language DVD's, I watched this initially in its' original language with English subtitles. The acting was so good, I believe I will continue to watch it that way. I would recommend this movie to anyone has something of an appreciation for Shakespeare and an appreciation for good movies. I came away with the impression that I had just seen a cinema classic for the ages. You may just get the same reaction.

Rating:
Summary: William Akira Shakespeare Kurosawa
Review: This film is undeniable the most notable adaptation of any work of William Shakespeare to the movie. The insights in every detail, the superb cast, the overwheelming photography, the camera's handle makes us inevitably to remind that happy sentence of Orson Welles who said once:
"One film is really extraordinary , when the camera is an eye in the mind of a poet".
Casually this film is made in 1985, the same year of Welles'death.
Kurosawa was a truly master. Once upon a time a critical compared to Kenji Mizoguchi with Bach. If this methaphor is assumed valid, then Kurosawa would have his musical image in Ludwig van Beethoven.
The amazing scene of the castle in flames, with a remarkable red that invites us to reflect about the human condition, his hunger for power, the horror generated by that unthirsty ambition. The multiple readings that concern with the violence and the passion carrying the devasting facts that appear all along this film.
The opening sequences in which the three brothers are together with their father is filmed with such kind of perfection that I wouldn't wonder to know that this an obligated reference for all those students of direction. In this sense, this multiple exchange of points of view reveal us without affections of any kind,the essencial nature of the human being inmersed in the purest spirit shakesperian.
Kurosawa, like the great giants of th cinema handles the camera like Gods, includes the color and the nature's elements like adittional actors (Dreams). Just remember that Akira was the first filma maker who dared film against the sun in that glorius film Rashoman from 1950. His achievements all along his brilliant career are too many and certainly, would be beyond the reach of this shorts analysis.
This is one of these gems that you must see over and over, just when you admire this eternal masterpiece.
To be true the others Shakespeare's versions that deseve to be carried to the desert island would be in my opinion Titus 2000 (Julie Taymor), Othelo 1953 (Welles) , Richard III 1955 (Olivier), and Throne of blood 1957(Kurosawa).
But this movie is just several steps ahead all the titles above mentioned.

Rating:
Summary: The Greatest Adaptation of Shakespeare to Film
Review: "Ran" (Chaos) is the greatest cinematic adaptation of Shakespeare and a masterpiece in its own right. In adapting the broad scenario of "King Lear" to a setting in Sixteenth Century Japan, Akira Kurosawa felt free to manipulate it to his own purposes, leading to a film that is perhaps even more bleak than the play.

First and foremost "Ran" is a visually stunning film, unencumbered by the received tradition of Shakespearean language, which never translates well onto the cinema screen, he has allowed the scenario to develop into images that are beautiful and horrific. Filmed on the slopes of Mount Fuji there is a sense of unreality, or nightmare about the whole epic, as though it is taking place in a mythic space, at once recognisable and alien. For a director best known for his black and white movies ("Seven Samurai", "Rashomon"), Kurosawa surprisingly uses color to breathtaking virtuoso effect. The scenes of soldiers flooding in waves across the volcanic wasteland of Mount Fuji carrying vivid blue, red or yellow flags are amongst the most extraordinary ever filmed. The battle scenes shock and astonish, not least because Kurosawa's use of sound is so exquisite and original; many of the most horrendous images of battle are shown without sound effects with only an elegiac musical accompaniment. Far from sanitising them, the effect is to shock you out of the viewing habits formed watching so many other "war" movies.

Yet "Ran" is so much more than a broad epic, or war movie. The more intimate scenes are carried off with understated conviction, the sly hypocrisy hidden behind formality and convention is conveyed in highly poised and stylised interior shots. This film can be both visceral (prepare yourself for the beheading of Lady Kaede: as visually explosive as anything by Tarantino, and set within a film that is more than mere surface) and restrained, depending on the nature of the scene. There are moments of quiet and tenderness that resonate long after the film had ended.

It is odd that so few successful films have been made from Shakespeare. The pre-eminent playwright of the western canon has translated beautifully into opera and stage directors can continually find fresh things to say about the plays themselves, yet in general film had been hopelessly incapable of doing anything of note with Shakespeare. Think of the ghastly declamatory rhetoric of Laurence Olivier in "Henry V", or the inane pop video that Baz Lurmann made from "Romeo and Juliet", not to mention Kenneth Brannagh's tediously self-important "Hamlet". Somehow Kurosawa succeeds where all these others fail. His earlier "Throne of Blood" was a beautifully realised adaptation of "Macbeth" to the Samurai period in Japan: "Ran" builds on that achievement and surpasses it. Perhaps the fact that Kurosawa was Japanese allowed him more creative license to work with Shakespeare, able to approach it simply as valid material for film making, and not as the shibboleth that it is to western artists.

In Ran we have the late masterpiece of one of the greatest and most important film makers. It is a distilled and precise work, powerful, visceral, contemplative, epic and intimate. In short this is film making on a par with the greatest art. Ran shows us what mainstream film making can achieve, but so rarely does.

Rating:
Summary: The best telling of King Lear I have ever seen.
Review: Kurosawa has tackled Shakespear before, like in the brilliant Throne Of Blood, but in this film he shows why he is one of the greatest directors of all time. Kurosawa was in his 70's at the time of making this film and proves he never lost his edge.
The story is set in the time of the samurai. A lord is turning over his rule to his oldest son, a desision that dose not sit well with his youngest son, who warns his father that his move will cause nothing but pain, and betrayal. He proves to be correct.
The movie is just like Kurosawa's other films in that it has the feel of a grand, sweeping epic but never makes you feel like you'r watching Ben-Hur. THe cinamatopraphy is outstanding and the acting is some of the best I have ever seen in a Japaness film, or any for that matter.
If you are looking for one of Kurosawa's best works this is a great place to start if you haven't already seen The Seven Samurai, this is a great peice of film making and somthing every film maker can learn from. I just wish as many people saw this film as have seen the last Friday The 13th, that would be sonmthing.

Rating:
Summary: It's not the movie
Review: I'll repeat the title of the review. It's not the movie. I think Kurosawa is just amazing, and I feel this film is fantastic. I already owned the other DVD release of this film and I ordered this one because honestly, the picture quality of the other is harsh to watch. And it's true this version is much cleaner, but they changed the aspect ratio. Ran was shot originally in a 1:85:1 ratio. For this new DVD they scanned it into the computer using an HD system, and chopped the frame from 1:85:1 to 16:9. It's hard to really compare the two ratios, but being a film geek when I started the film immediately I knew something was wrong when the image was bigger and the end of Kurosawa's name was chopped off. I pulled out my old version of Ran, and threw it on my computer and played the opening titles side by side. Sure enough, the edges of the film have been chopped off. Now, this won't bother most people. But for a film student like myself, it bothers me to see people mess with someone else's art in this manner. It's worse than Lucas butchering Star Wars or Speilberg and ET (albeit not by much) becasue it isn't even their film! Other films have been cleaned up and placed on to DVD without distorting the image, many Kurosawa films in fact. It bothered me to see it, and I was pretty let down, this is just a fair warning to anyone else like me.

Rating:
Summary: Kurosawa does David Lean
Review: I read "King Lear" several years ago and I confess that I got lost from time to time in the play. I believe that I understand it a lot better now that I have seen "Ran". This is one of those film epics ala "Dr. Zhivago" or "Lawrence of Arabia" with the added bonus that Shakespeare helped with the screenplay. I might get into trouble with that last comment. After all, the language was a little more down to earth but still on a level well above your typical epic. This foreign film won an Academy Award for best costume design and it's not hard to see why. The only problem is, nobody ever seems to get theirs dirty except when they're killed. There are a number of battle scenes that bring to mind the old film trailer line..A CAST OF THOUSANDS. The color and quality of the film are superb on this version at least until the last part where it darkened rather noticeably. Although it's 160 minutes in length, I have no complaints about that fact. I do have to admit that I had to take a break a time or two to run some errands but the story line was well developed so I had no trouble picking up where I left off. This would have been an impressive movie to see on the big screen. Like the play, this is a tragedy in which many characters are killed but the motivation behind it all is the heart of it's story.

As I always do with foreign language DVD's, I watched this initially in its' original language with English subtitles. The acting was so good, I believe I will continue to watch it that way. I would recommend this movie to anyone has something of an appreciation for Shakespeare and an appreciation for good movies. I came away with the impression that I had just seen a cinema classic for the ages. You may just get the same reaction.

Rating:
Summary: Far From Kurosawa's Best, Overrated
Review: Yes, it was the 50s classic Japanese director Akira Kurosawa coming back to make a final color epic. But unfortunately, magic doesn't always strike the second time around. This film is just flat; it shows you how much Toshiro Mifune really meant to Kurasawa.

Kurasawa's great weakness was his apparently utter disdain or fear of females, which to me is a sign of borderline heterophobia or homosexual tendencies. He seemed to seek out stories where evil women or unfaithful women existed as the curse of man. Here at his advanced age, Kurasawa seems to have felt free to come completely out of the closet, living vicariously through the character of the feminized court jester. Even at this mature stage of his life, Kurasawa shows an amount of understanding of and sympathy for the plight of women that one would expect to find in a in a confused teenage boy.

If you want to experience the classic Japanese films era at its apex, watch Seven Samurai, Hidden Fortress, Rashomon, Sansho the Bailiff, & Tokyo Story. This film is OK, but for me it sullens the memory of the films of that great era.

Rating:
Summary: Love, hate relationship with RAN
Review: I am not particularly a fan of Japanese films, I think it is second rate to Chinese movies. Ran however is the exception. I like this movie, I think the movie was very meaningful. I like how the movie started off with the father(King Hidetora)getting pissed off at his son Saburo for talking back bluntly to him with little regard for the father's feelings. Then later on Hidetora ironically finds out that Saburo was the best and most loyal of his 3 sons. The father later realizes his great mistake for banishing Saburo. So the whole theme of this movie was about loyalty and who you can and shouldn't trust. This movie was very meaningful to me because it depicts the true human nature of a person and how one thing such as greed or wealth can quickly bring out that person's true nature. This movie was very sad and disheartening because Hidetora later realized that even the people you loved and trusted most above all others will some day stab you in the back. What a life to live without love from anyone. I feel greatly for Hidetora and I hope that that kind of thing doesn't happen to me. A very moving story that will pull at your heart strings and make you think twice about who you can really trust in this world. I kind of had some dislike for this movie because at some parts, it just dragged on and on. The worst thing about this movie was that during the many battle scenes, when the soldiers got killed, the blood was an awfully fake color. It wasn't a deep red color like real blood, it was of a bright orangey-red color, like someone spilled paint all over them. This unrealistic blood color ruined the whole effect of the movie and just made me realize that I was watching a movie after all. All the realism quickly went away. I would recommend that you watch it because it is a great story, but I don't know if it's such a great movie to keep because it drags on at certain parts and also there was not much of an indepth storyline, it was just about loyalty, that's about it, not much else is involved to beef up the script.