Just so beautiful

Rating: 8/10 (9 October 2010)

Ran succeeds as one of Akira Kurosawa's legendary epics. This film is an artistic masterpiece of such beauty and grandeur, that it can put one in an immense state of awe and wonder. I'm not always one for epic scale films like this, but in the context of a master of storytelling like Kurosawa, I loved it. Ran is an almost three hour tale of political unrest in a kingdom of feudal Japan. When the patriarch of the Ichimonji family, Lord Hidetora Ichimonji, decides he wants to live out his remaining years in peace and ease, he hands over power of the kingdom to his three sons. In the vibrant opening sequence of the movie, Lord Hidetora announces this to his sons are receives mixed reactions from them. Two of the sons flatter their father and accept his request happily. The youngest of the three sons has an entirely different reaction, telling his father of the mistake he is making and how the kingdom will crumble if the powers are to be divided like this. Furious at his sons accusations, Hidetora banishes his youngest son, leaving the two older sons to rule the kingdom. However, shortly after this exchanging of power, the youngest son's grave warnings become reality, and the two older sons conspire against their father to strip everything of him, including his title as The Great Lord. From here, war ensues in an elaborate tale of greed and deceit, as political turmoil leads to some of the grandest scenes ever imagined in this gigantic scale epic.
Kurosawa's career began all the way back in the 1940's, so obviously the bulk of his film career consists of black and white films. Ran, however, was shot in color, and it is some of the brightest most eccentric color I have ever seen. The film opens in the beautiful rolling hills of Japan. The grass gleams a rich green, and the sky a vibrant blue. It's the kind of beautiful landscape that would bring a tear to the more transcendentalist eye. In this opening scene we are introduced to the main characters of this film. Lord Hidetora is dressed in a pure white kimono and his three sons each wear different colored kimonos that are all equally vivid. Jiro, the violent and unpredictable one, wears a blood red kimono. Taro, the slightly less unpredictable but more naive one, wears a glowing yellow kimono. And Saburo, the fair, peaceful, yet also truthful one, wears a soft blue kimono. These colors remain consistent throughout the film as Ran prides itself in color symbolism, using it as it's most important motif throughout the entire film. The opening scene sets the stage for the pacing and style of this film. What the characters say in this scene is obvious foreshadowing for what events will take place in the movie, what the characters simply wear is an almost bigger foreshadowing of how they will each play out and develop over the grand scale of this film.
Ran continues to reinforce its use of color to heighten the visual experience of this film. By the end, it's hard to decipher whether you have just watched a painting within a film, or a film within a painting. Either way, this film is a work of art not only in cinematic context, but in the context of the painters medium as well. Kurosawa is known for his ability to set up a beautifully choreographed shot for every frame of this films, but with the added use of color in Ran it gives the film credence in multiple artistic mediums. Every shot could be reconstructed into a beautiful and vibrant painting Kurosawa did something genius here, and it might display a directors greatest transition from black and white to color in the history of cinema. It's somewhat sad to see how this added level of symbolism has seemed to dwindle away now that color has become the norm. The use of color in filmmaking has switched gears, when we now have directors shooting their films in black and white for artistic effect and color for something more normal.
The greatness of Ran doesn't end at its visuals though. There is a fantastic narrative within these vivid and colorful vistas. It is a very slow paced film that dwells on certain scenes for a very long time, yet never overbearingly long. The story itself is fairly complex, as would be expected from such a grand scheme of a picture, yet as long as you stay with it, it is an incredible story with a great deal of subtext and underlying themes that serve to give it an even greater purpose as a revolutionary film. With any epic film like this you'd expect it to cover a lot of proverbial and existential ground and it certainly does. We see everything from the themes of close family bonds and loyalties, to the traumatic effects of war on the human mind and soul. Ran is a dramatic tragedy of lost innocence and peace. It is a harrowing look at the destruction of family and kingdom. Yet, despite these bleak themes, it still manages to be a stunningly beautiful film. This beauty serves to drive home the emotional impact of the film, engraving some very gripping images into your mind.
Ran is a story told on such an unimaginably epic scale. It's complex narrative is not for everyone, yet if you put your mind towards understanding the emotion and symbolism of this film, it becomes something so much more than your average tale, even by Akira Kurosawa's standards. The film is rich both in story and visual artistry, and the two elements blend together so splendidly. This film is immaculate and is filled with such subtle emotional nuance. It is a sweepingly beautiful painting that tells its story in an unforgettable way. Ran is a timeless classic that stands out as one of Akira Kurosawa's best.