Kurosawa does King Lear

Rating: Null/10 (8 February 2016)

Put simply, this is an excellent Samurai version of Shakespeare's King Lear. To be fair if you combine Shakespearean tragedy with Samurai swords, medieval castles and fuedal savagery, you can't really go too far wrong.
This was produced and directed by Akira Kurosawa, the most beloved of all Japanese filmmakers. His work is much more accessible than arguably Japan's finest ever film director, Ozu.
This is probably Akira Kurosawa's most popular film after Yojimbo and Sanjuro. This is one of the few Akira Kurosawa films shot in color. This movie can also lay claim to the fact that George Lucas and Steven Spielberg ponied up the dough to fund and release it to a worldwide audience. That almost made up for Howard the Duck and 1941.
If you're not familiar with the story of King Lear, here is the deal. It's finally time that an aging senile king must divide up his kingdom between his three daughters. Two are conniving moles whose tongues only ever drip honeyed platitudes to their Father. Since they tell him what he wants to hear, he hands them the largest pieces of his royal pie, while the third, the honest and pious but bluntly speaking youngest daughter is pushed to the side. Being the wisest, she bides her time, fully expecting her older sisters to annihilate one another and ready to step in to salvage whatever is left of her Father's kingdom, whom she only wants to preserve in order to honour her ailing father. Clearly the tragedy is that her Father should have chosen her over her nasty cold hearted siblings.
So swap that for an aging Samurai lord and his three Male heirs and you basically get the idea. To complicate that family tragedy, old enemy armies stand at the border, massing to attack his land, while the old senile fool is dithering over who gets to eat pie and who gets stand in the shadows. This is one excellent samurai action war film.
It's a good primer in getting acquainted with the art and story telling of sensei Kurosawa, himself an actual member of the Samurai class, so it is something of a poignant thing for him to tell stories purely exploring the national character of both feudal and modern Japan.
I own the bluray version of this movie and the picture is stunning.