Review #842: 'Ran' (1985)

Ten years in the making, Akira Kurosawa's Ran took it's toll on director Akira Kurosawa. Following a highly successful career in the 1950's and 60's, Kurosawa fell out of favour with modern audiences and producers due to his traditional film-making styles and topics. Japan had experienced it's own New Wave, where directors used innovative techniques to look forward, rather than looking back. Eventually backed by Sidney Lumet, Kurosawa developed his labour of love, based on Shakespeare's King Lear, and made Kagemusha (1980) - a 'warm-up' for Ran - while developing the project. He storyboarded every scene with beautiful artwork, ensured that every costume was made by hand, and even built a castle to torch it down for the movie. On top of this, his wife passed away during filming (Kurosawa took only one day off work to mourn), and by the film's completion, Kurosawa was almost completely blind.

Such dedication and rigorous planning doesn't always work out, but Ran is Kurosawa's final masterpiece. The term 'epic' is thrown around far too often these days, but if one film could really be labelled as epic, it is Ran. Epic in scale, length and scope, it's a complex, exciting and bloody movie, capturing the tragedy of Shakespeare's play, and invigorating with it's Machiavellian intrigue. The ageing warlord Hidetora Ichimonji (Tatsuya Nakadai) decides to pass his throne to his eldest son Taro (Akira Terao) so he can spend his remaining years in peace. To his other sons, Jiro (Jinpachi Nezu) and the youngest Saburo (Daisuke Ryu), he leaves two large castles. Saburu objects, calling the decision folly and foreseeing instability, and is banished by his father for his loyalty.

Before Taro's backside has warmed his new throne, his wife Lady Kaede (Mieko Harada) is whispering doubts into his ear. With Hidetora still residing in the castle, Lady Kaede tells Taro that his crown is hollow and his men will never earn his respect until his father is removed. After Hidetora kills one of Jiro's men who was about to kill his fool Kyoami (Funeral Parade of Roses' (1964) Pita), Jiro banishes his father, who then seeks refuge with Jiro. But Jiro has plans of his own, and seeing Taro as a weak leader, pretends to side with Taro in preparation for a future betrayal, and also sends Hidetora packing. With nowhere to turn, the broken and increasingly senile old man wanders to the ruins of a castle he conquered in his warmongering days. But when Saburo hears of his brothers' betrayal and Lady Kaede's scheming, war begins to brew.

Kurosawa's precise planning pays off, as Ran is a gorgeous canvas of colours and scenery, to the extent that any scene could be paused, printed and hung on the wall as a piece of art. The costumes, a sumptuous blend of red's and yellow's, bring the battle scenes to life. Bodies litter the ground, streaming with bright red blood that give the movie a grim and apocalyptic feel, and when juxtaposed with Hidetora's mental decline, makes it feel like the world is literally crumbling around him. The acting is surprisingly subtle and subdued, especially when compared to Kurosawa's earlier works. Nakadai is outstanding as the lost old man, though he is helped by some impressive make-up, but the film belongs to Harada, whose ruthless conniving truly embodies Shakespeare's text. Quite simply one of the finest films ever made.


Directed by: Akira Kurosawa
Starring: Tatsuya Nakadai, Akira Terao, Jinpachi Nezu, Daisuke Ryû, Mieko Harada, Pîtâ
Country: Japan/France

Rating: *****

Tom Gillespie

Review #472: 'Yojimbo' (1961)

A perfect example of how film style can be influential across continents, and can project that influence back into a dying genre, Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo took its plot from Dashiell Hammett's crime novel 'Red Harvest' (which also influenced Miller's Crossing (1990)), retold as a samurai jidai-geki (Japanese period film), but fundamentally the film was a stylistic homage to the widescreen American westerns, of particularly John Ford. By the 1960's the western genre was diminished in the United States, but Italian director Sergio Leone borrowed the entire scenario of Yojimbo (this translates as The Bodyguard), cast then unknown Clint Eastwood, and made one of the greatest westerns, A Fistful of Dollars (1964). Kurosawa's influence can be seen in many post-1960's American directors in a wide range of styles and genres.

Set in the 1860's, where the shogunate, samurai tradition was suffering due to modernisation and changing attitudes. The lone samurai figure (known here by a false name, Sanjuro), played by Kurosawa's favourite actor, Toshiro Mifune, arrives in a feuding small town. Two rival gangs fight and bicker to gain total control over territory, and Mifune, a hired killer, brings his own bitter vengeance, and begins playing off the rival gangs off of one another. He changes sides at whim, and bargains for the greatest offering of money. His skills as a samurai are displayed when he first arrives in town, and his abilities are lauded, and the head of each gang vies for the samurai's attention, and for the chance to win the war.

Kurosawa's love of the widescreen format (tohoscope is used here - the branded system - like technoscope/vitascope et al. - for Japan's Toho studios that Kurosawa was working under), is obvious, and he uses it incredibly well. The incredible widescreen compositions are a beauty to behold, enhanced by black and white photography and the cinematography of Kazuo Miyagawa. Kurosawa was also a master of atmosphere, from character tensions to the more ethereal: Capturing feudal hostilities in western genre iconographic imagery, the opposing groups standing at each end of the street, Kurosawa adds the consistent movement of the wind moving the autumnal leaves - this is the kind of detail that heightens the visual experience.

Kurosawa's influence is undisputed (George Lucas - living off his one idea as he does - was hugely influenced), his style and storytelling genius would be hard not to homage - or "borrow" from. His imagery alone stand as fundamentally beautiful, the compositions' mis-en-scene holding the story together, making it believable and in fact becomes the films foundation - you could easily watch the film with the sound off, and still become totally absorbed in the story. With a genuine sense of humour (very black humour consequently), the film shows its intentions as a funny story about the foolish nature of war, in a diminishing world of tradition and the coming of modernity, with all of its machinery.


Directed by: Akira Kurosawa
Starring: Toshirô Mifune, Tatsuya Nakadai, Yôko Tsukasa, Isuzu Yamada
Country: Japan

Rating: *****

Marc Ivamy

Review #178: 'The Face of Another' (1966)

Mr. Okuyama (Tatsuya Nakadai) is a physically and emotionally wounded man. After an industrial accident at work, his face has been scarred and mutilated beyond recognition, and even his wife rejects him, even though she says his physical appearance doesn't matter. It has left him bitter and angry, until his psychiatrist Dr. Hira (Mikijiro Hira) comes up with a way to fashion a 'face mask' that will give him the appearance of having a completely normal face, albeit with a few joining marks. Hira doesn't do this just out of kindness, he is fascinated how this new face will alter Okuyama's personality and way of life.

The Face of Another is a fascinating film that highlights the social attitudes to physical appearance. There are hundreds of films and morality tales that teach you that it is inner beauty that counts, and once you allow this to shine then your physical attractiveness becomes irrelevant. Everyone knows that this is bullshit, so its refreshing to see a film that makes it clear from the outset that physical appearance has a massive part to play in society. Okuyama's new face, which is an attractive one, changes him so much that he takes on an almost dual identity. Dr. Hira delights in telling him that he has bought flashy new clothes, something he was never concerned with before. It becomes clear that whilst before Okuyama merely wanted to be normal again and fit back in society, his new face is engulfing him, and to be 'normal' simply isn't enough anymore.

As with many of the Japanese New Wave film-makers of the 1960's-70's, director Hiroshi Teshigahara takes some bold steps and sneaks in some surrealist and art-house values in a movie that is otherwise played relatively straight. A 'fictional' character appears every now and then throughout (she is first imagined by Okuyama's wife as a character in a movie); one side of her face is scarred and burned. She appears quite rarely, but seems to serve as an alternative to Okuyama's increasingly vain soul. Another scene seems a ball of hair that floats in the air, unnoticed by the people in the laboratory. I have no idea what it meant, and couldn't really admit to it being wholly successful, but it certainly got my attention nonetheless.

A powerful, disturbing, and poignant drama/horror from the greatest era in Japanese cinema. The film seems all the more important now, 45 years on, in a world where a botox injection can be as easy as buying a pack of cigarettes, and where physical 'beauty' is less a bonus than a necessity.


Directed by: Hiroshi Teshigahara
Starring: Tatsuya Nakadai, Mikijirô Hira, Kyôko Kishida
Country: Japan

Rating: ****

Tom Gillespie