乱 (Chaos)

Rating: 10/10 (15 October 2015)

Kurosawa had fallen out of favour by this time in his career. Ran had been meticulously storyboarded by the director himself, painting colours and conceptualising the masterpiece in his mind years and years before he finally got the funding for what was the most expensive Japanese film at the time. The third and last of his Shakespeares, Ran tells the story of the old King Lear figure Hidetora. But there is a key difference; Shakespeare never delved into the details of the old king's past conquests and rulings, but here Hidetora is painted as a warlike persona, brutal and ruthless in his day. Fast forward years, and the ageing warlord cannot even commit seppuku with the katana he so once viciously brandished.
The opening shots are almost garish in their use of colour. We do not expect the three heralded sons to be kitted out in the bright primaries of red, yellow and blue. We get wide shots of the clear blue sky, of endless grassy hills from all directions of the four riders as they look each way. Kurosawa's penchant for waiting for the perfect weather conditions pays off, because after banishment the clouds suddenly come out, and the grass is dull in the billowing wind. When Jiro's crimson army arrives to face Saburo, a cloud envelops the plain, and again when his envoy rides across the plain, bringing with him a false message of truce and an ominous shadow alongside. In 1985, hundreds of extras wait for that ten second shot. And in that harrowing and massive scale clash at the castle, the foreshadowed storm finally enters the film and serenades the massacre.
It is a magnificent battle scene, with many things happening. Kurosawa chose to construct the entire third castle against a muddy hill and places his soldiers against the grimy backdrop, intensifying the colours emblazoned onto their uniform which signal their allegiance. His multi-cam coverage is never more evident here; placing cameras inside the battle itself and cutting judiciously to reveal horror after horror; a corpse being trampled by galloping horse, a solider struggling amongst the lifeless bodies of his comrades, another clutching his dismembered limb, and that magnificent shot of a crazy Hidetora, stumbling into the midst of the battlefield, while red and yellow sides watch him intently and the remains of a great castle burn from above. The cameras seldom dolly in Ran; they tilt and pan to reveal the action from a objective, omniscient view. There are sparse use of close-ups. As Ebert says, we are like gods, witnessing these atrocities of unfathomable nature. The Western orchestration punctuates Takemitsu's Eastern score; Kurosawa's divergence from tradition makes it all the more horrifying. Hidetora's ornate costume changes into rags, and his face becomes ghostly in his anguish and madness, deep gashes and burned eyes, the Noh influence stylising his mask-like Shiwajo as the weary old man wandering and contemplating his sins.
Harada's Lady Kaede is another character of Noh influence. Observe how precise and elegantly she shuffles into the room, uses pointed questions to direct Kurogane to murder for her, before shutting him out. She drifts down onto the ground cross-legged, silent but so evidently displaying her sexual hold over Jiro. She explodes in emotion; the insane cackles as she seduces Jiro, closing each shoji one by one, and in that final moment where she confesses her vengeance and true motive. How long has she held Hidetora's atrocities in her mind? Kurosawa visualises her end in a sudden release of anger and bloodlust; no gore, but a painterly splash of blood on the back wall. A stark and powerful image.
Shakespeare's play is perhaps not as focused as Ran is, with its multiple story lines and scattered soliloquies. Kurosawa's screen adaptation conjures images of sheer scale and horror like no theatre stage could. In that final scene, a blind Tsurumaru wanders and drops the image of Buddha into irrecoverable ruins. The gods have abandoned all sympathy. The camera paints a picture he will never see; a tiny helpless figure dead centre in a desolate, hellish world near sunset. Weren't we hunting boar in the idyllic bright hills just moments ago? How finite power is, and how even swifter seized power is lost.