Purely Joyful Movie!

Good story, Not enough for a whole film

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

In Medieval Japan, an elderly warlord retires, handing over his empire to his three sons. However, he vastly underestimates how the new-found power will corrupt them and cause them to turn on each other...and him. Ran is an almost 3 hour long movie of absolutely total nothing and it literally is nothing. I found myself getting bored from what was happening, the acting was very bland and the storyline even worse. This is no masterpiece or even just an ok and watchable japanese movie, instead it's a film that will bore viewers alot. (0/10)

One of Kurosawa's best, "Ran" is a story set on samurai era Japan that touches on different subjects, as for example family, power, revenge or betrayal, delivering a powerful movie that will stay for a long time with the viewer.Old Lord Hidetora Ichimonji is getting old and, when a couple of lords come to ask for his third son to marry one of the lord's daughters, Hidetora decides it is time to retire. He will divide his territories between his three sons and retire, even though he will keep his title and some power. The youngest, Saburo is against this decision, but the older two brothers are really happy with their father's decision and promise to take care of him. Saburo is sent away, stripped from all of his possessions and Hidetora starts his new life.What follows is a story of hate, betrayal, desire, corruption... You know, the stuff of great stories. The two older brothers start to plot against each other and against their father, the wife of the older brother too, Saburo just seems to worry about his father... There are a lot of threads but Kurosawa does an amazing job in threading them and keep the plot advancing while making things more and more interesting. The plot is full of nice twists and touches, and the characters are well rounded, their behavior and decisions well justified and presented. Kurosawa was a great director, and every frame of this movie is a clear example of his touch. Everything is really great, from the music to the palette of color, and even the use of the scenery is also top notch.Totally worth seeing, "Ran" is a movie about the dangers of power. Any kind of.

Akira Kurosawa returns to Shakespeare in this loose adaptation of King Lear that also incorporates elements from the legends of the daimyō Mōri Motonari. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that those two sources are eerily similar. An aging warlord (Tatsuya Nakadai) that has decided to retire and hand over the three great castles he has conquered during his bloody reign to his three sons, with the oldest named his successor and the head of the great house. But almost immediately the sons begin arguing among one another and soon the warlord finds himself dethroned and wandering the battlefields of the war his sons are waging.Quite like with his previous Shakespeare adaptation, Throne of Blood, Kurosawa delves deep into man's corruptibility and the taint of power in this film. Many of his films are at least somewhat heroic in nature and tone. Whereas the protagonist of this film, the warlord, is anything but. We learn throughout the course of the film that his life is a long tale of conquest, beaten down enemies, blood, fire and destruction. Yet Kurosawa achieves the very hard task of making him sympathetic despite all that. He obviously loves his sons and his anguish at seeing his life's work torn down in a matter of days is real and jarring.Perhaps it could even be said that his character is reflected in his sons. There's the oldest, the one with the power, pride and possessions, but who is brought low by those closest to him and stands on feet of clay. There's the schemer, the one willing to commit atrocities to get what he wants. And there's the youngest, who's the most driven by the love he has for his family, but who's also the one with the most difficulties in surviving the war-torn realm they live in.The film is also massive in scope, budget and length. Its themes are deep, its running time is closer to three hours and its story is a humongous five act monstrosity. It was also the most expensive Japanese film ever made back then and the money is definitely on the screen. Hundreds of soldiers at once on display, all of them decked in armour. Entire castles built and then destroyed. Lavish costumes, ruins and locations. I don't think I've seen a movie with this much handcraft on the screen since The Lord of the Rings trilogy. And this predates those films by almost two decades.Yet the film is always gripping, always interesting and endlessly fascinating. It's called one of Kurosawa's finest, and yeah, I can see why.

This was my fourth Kurosawa film and my favourite to date. Previously, I'd started off by watching SEVEN SAMURAI (a great film), then trying out KAGEMUSHA (which I thought was okay, but too constrained by budget). Next up was an early classic, RASHOMON, which was a fine human drama, and now comes RAN, Kurosawa's final historical epic and the film that he claimed KAGEMUSHA was a mere warm-up for. I can see that. RAN is an epic film, truly epic and one of the best-shot films I've ever seen. Every frame of the film seems to have been painstakingly composed and the result is a bright, colourful, and vivid production that fully brings to life the castles, costumes, and characters of feudal Japan.Tatsuya Nakadai, returning from KAGEMUSHA, here plays Lord Ichimonji, an immensely powerful ruler who concedes that power to his three sons at the film's beginning. However, his plans quickly go awry and before too long he finds himself ostracised from Japanese society and a literal outcast. This film is a loose reworking of the Shakespeare classic King Lear (another favourite of mine), something I really enjoyed as Kurosawa takes elements of the Shakespeare plot without following it slavishly. One of the best inclusions is the fool, who comments on the on-screen antics the same way as he did in the Shakespeare play.It goes without saying that RAN is a tragedy and, indeed, it must be one of the most tragic films I've ever witnessed. Those looking for a happy ending should go elsewhere as this is all about doom, despair, and overall the failings of human nature. There's a fine cast of stand-out performers but one of the best has to be Mieko Harada, whose Lady Macbeth-style character is vengeful and terrifying. Nakadai, unrecognisable in ghostly, age-old makeup, is outstanding as the lord losing his mind, and Kurosawa is there to capture every little nuance. The most dramatic part of the film is a massacre set in a castle which is full of on screen death and destruction and successfully depicts the ferocity of battle better than 99% of other films do.Like most of the Kurosawa historical epics, this is a lengthy and slow moving film, one that emphasis characterisation over action, plot over incident, but it's well worth sitting through. In the end, I found this one of the most rewarding films I've ever watched and anybody who professes themselves to be a fan of the cinematic medium should have it in their collection.