Akira Kurosawa delivers some of the most phenomenal and artistic imagery in film, a true masterpiece

Rating: 10/10 (5 April 2020)

In Medieval Japan, an elderly warlord retires, handing over his empire to his three sons. That's the opening of this masterpiece, a story so rich and each frame are simply stunning and artistic. It's my first movie from the acclaimed and legendary film maker/director Akira Kurosawa and maybe it wasn't a movie I should have started with but I've long wanted to see and experience it and I'm glad I did. The imagery is again pretty, extraordinary even. How Akira Kurosawa used paintings as storyboard is incredible and a very nice way of doing things. He also wrote the story and script ten years before filming so combine that with the paintings as storyboard we know that Ran was a passion project. The movie is based on William Shakespeare's King Lear but set in the Sengoku Period in Japan and it worked perfectly.
The acting is phenomenal and feels very real and accurate to the time period, they succeed in giving a believable and dramatic performance that comes out as a perfect performance. The costume and prop department did a magnificent job at creating remarkable costumes and props that immerses you into this epic adventure that is Ran. The music is something amazing in the movie as it moves the story forward and used at emotional times. The various of sets they built was enormous, superb. With the huge amount of long shots Akira used made it look like paintings, the camera angles and such, it probably were exactly like he thought it would be.
This was a very interesting experience, a movie so special but so superb. It's something I've never seen before and I'm glad I got the experience to watch this piece of art that might be Akira Kurosawa's Magnum Opus? Ran was phenomenal, strange at times but overall superb!