Ran
Suddenly we found ourselves with an unusual amount of time in the evening, and neither of us had to get up in the morning, so finally, after many months of “I’d love to but it’s too long”, we finally got to watch Ran and it was awesome. I’ve seen most of the Kurosawa big hitters at this stage (but his back catalogue is deep) but this has been a long standing 2hr 40min hole. I think we did Seven Samurai in two sittings, much as I dislike doing that, but I have a job and children here.
Ran is an adaptation of King Lear, but since I have no idea how that story goes, I was going in fresh and also don’t know how much it stuck to the play (wiki says Lear was stupid but Hidetora deserved it). Set in Japan a few hundred years ago, elderly warlord Hidetora decides to retire and give everything to his oldest son, Taro. Taro, obviously, is fine with this, as is, for whatever reason, his younger brother Jiro. The youngest, Saburo, thinks this is a very big mistake and will have catastrophic consequences. Guess who’s right.
I still think if Hidetora himself had just abided by his own rules of doing a Homer-into-the-hedge, the same rules that Taro made him sign later after he started meddling, this would all probably have been fine. But he wanted his warlord cake and to also eat it, and oops, catastrophic consequences.
We get several epic battles, with the brothers helpfully colour coded. No expense was spared on horses, arrows, fake blood (lots of fake blood), guys falling off horses constantly. Endless stunning images. I’ve seen very little in cinema to rival Hidetora coming down the stairs of the burning castle, out of his mind, while the red and yellow armies part at the gate to let him pass by.
Taro is killed by Jiro - by way of his general, a classic Chief O’Brien style put-upon guy called Kurogane - and so now Jiro is in charge of everything. Taro’s widow, Kaede, who seems at this stage to be a puppet master Lady Macbeth type, very quickly seduces Jiro and gets him to kill his own wife, Sue, and bring back her head. Except he sends Kurogane to do it and he brings back the head of a stone fox and, hilariously, completely sticks with the bit: “Damn, I guess she was a fox all along. These crafty bastards are everywhere”.
Also going on is the Fool character, which isn’t really a thing in Japan, who has the job of telling Hidetora whenever he’s being stupid (and only being smacked once), and then later looking after Lady Sue when she’s on the run trying not to be beheaded. She is later beheaded. Her brother, who is dressed as a woman and had his eyes earlier gouged out on Hidetora’s orders, is also on the run with them.
Kaede reveals she was born in the castle and saw Hidetora’s armies slaughter her family and take it, and this whole “wouldn’t war be nice?” plot was her plan to get revenge by taking them down. It works flawlessly, and she is instantly executed but not that bothered about it.
Meanwhile, Saburo, the good son, I guess, just wants his dad back so he lines up his own army to find him. At the same time, the armies of two other neighbouring families are hanging around, Fortinbras style, to pick up whatever pieces are left. Another giant battle, horses, arrows, plenty of new-fangled, so-called guns. Saburo gets sniped, Hidetora dies on the spot, Jiro dies in battle. I guess Lear was a tragedy so you had to see it coming.