Review of Ran (1985) by Adam S — 04 Aug 2012

In 16th century Japan, the Great Lord of a powerful samurai clan abdicates his power to his oldest son, causing a rift between two younger sons and their father, leading to much betrayal and warfare in Akira Kurosawa's 1985 transformation of "King Lear" to the feuding clans epoch.

A companion piece, as it were, to three previous Kurosawa films, "Seven Samurai", "Throne of Blood", and "Kagemusha", but "Ran" stands alone as the pessimistic, apocalyptic vision of a master filmmaker who feels his time may be near, and though he'd still make films for another eight years, this is the film that effectively sums up his career, both glorious, difficult, and overwhelmingly dark, a devastating portrait of human frailty, greed, and betrayal at it's bleakest.

But the colors, the amazing reds, yellows, and greens, and the Oscar winning costumes, remain warm and bright, a lovely vision of purity amongst constant decay. If you get both the Criterion double disc and the recent Studio Canal Blu-ray in your hands at the same time, you'll be in for hours and hours of in depth study of one of the great action epics of our time.