Short Take: Ran

The arts have their ironies. The two best film versions of the plays of William Shakespeare, the English language’s greatest writer, are not in English. Ran and Throne of Blood, which adapt, respectively, King Lear and Macbeth, are both Japanese-language productions. The films don't try to transpose the richness of Shakespeare’s language, considered by many to be the plays’ greatest glory. Their director, Akira Kurosawa, compensated with powerful imagery that eloquently dramatizes the plays’ meanings. Kurosawa made the material his own, and the films’ visionary quality is what sets them apart from other screen treatments. A further irony: Ran, arguably the more impressive of the two pictures, takes the most liberty with its source material. Set in 16th-century Japan, it’s no longer the story of Lear and his three daughters. It’s now the tale of Lord Hidetora (Tatsuya Nakadai) and his three sons (Akira Terao, Jinpachi Nezu, and Daisuke Ryu). Edmund the Bastard, who seduced two of Lear’s daughters in his quest for power, is reimagined as the Lady Kaede (Mieko Harada), the wife of Hidetora’s eldest son. A monstrously vengeful woman, she combines Edmund with aspects of Lady Macbeth, Queen Herodias, crime-fiction femmes fatales, and in one startling moment, Count Dracula. The basic plot is the same, though, and none of the principals are winners in the end. The play’s horror is rooted in the destruction of family bonds, both between parents and children, and siblings with one another. Kurosawa remains true to this, and he most powerfully conveys it in one awesomely apocalyptic set piece. Hidetora, who has been cast out by the two elder sons, takes refuge with his entourage in the fortress vacated by the third. The elder sons lay siege to the fortress with the troops Hidetora had placed under their command, and the screen drips blood from the massacre. Hidetora sits in stunned silence as the flaming arrows shot by the sons’ archers fly all around him. One of the sons is killed, and Hidetora, driven mad by despair, staggers out of the fortress. The sons’ troops clear the way as he passes, showing the deference for their former leader that the sons likely never felt. It’s as great an epic scene as one will ever find in movies. The rest of the film is almost as impressive, and the visuals are never less than remarkable. Kurosawa often evokes a God’s-eye view of the action, with the characters, in their colorful outfitting, elegantly framed against the backdrop of the sets and the spectacular landscapes. The cinematography is by Takao Saito, Masaharu Ueda, and Asakuze Nakai, with production design by Shinobu Muraki and Yoshiro Muraki. Emi Wada designed the gorgeous costumes. (The outfits, all created by hand, reportedly took nearly three years to complete.) The harshly beautiful music, heavy with discord and percussion, is by Toru Takemitsu. Kurosawa collaborated on the script with Hideo Oguni and Masato Ide.