Review of Ran (1985) by Chris H — 20 Mar 2011

So I LOVE Kurosawa, but I really didn't see the appeal for this, let alone why people often put it in his top 3 films. I'm not familiar with King Lear at all (which this is based on), so perhaps that is a reason for it, but a great film should be able to reach even the audiences who haven't read the source material, and this just didn't do much for me.

Nakadai is good (lots of the performances are way over the top, however, but you come to expect this from Japanese films), but everything else is lacking; the camera shots and action scenes are so stolid that I keep feeling like we were watching one of those fake reenactment battles some people do for hobbies - the setting literally just looked like they'd picked the nearest field (the 'castles' and such that they used were great, however).

Costume design, etc. is great, but you can't call a film good just for that. The whole film focuses on shaming this old Lord and his horrible, power-grabbing sons. There's little to no story development and structure - certainly not worthy of what I have seen in other Kurosawa films anyway.

It's a real shame for me that I didn't like this. I'm going to read King Lear, then watch this again, and see if my opinion changes.