What can you await when two savvy connoisseurs of storytelling meet? A masterpiece. This time the revered ’’Akira Kurosawa’’ pays a tribute to the genius storyteller ’’William Shakespeare’’. Kurosawa’s ’’Ran’’ is an unconstrained adaption of the tragic ’’King Lear’’.
’’King Lear’’: For those who are bird-brained (I was years back) to Shakespeare’s King Lear: Lear was an old pre-Christian warrior king of southwest England. At the fag end of his masterdom, Lear asked his three daughters if they loved him. The older two claimed to love him grotesquely, while the third daughter said, she loved her father as much as she loved salt (Don’t try that out if you are on for a pull..you’ll be rejected outright). Lear immediately disaffiliates her and distributes his kingdom amongst the older two. He goes to live with his first daughter with his hundred aides. She persists to reduce his aides to fifty. When he moves to his second daughter, she reduces them to twenty five.
Eventually he is left alone until his third daughter comes to his rescue, builds an army, defeats the other two and restores Lear to his kingdom. (Now you know where movies like ’’Baghban’’ get their inspirations from).
’’Ran’’:Ran in japanese means ’’chaos’’. Loosely apadted from King Lear, Ran Kicks off with the introduction of the gray power, japanese warlord Hidetora and his three sons, Taro, Jiro, and Saburo. Hidetora decides on distributing his kingdom amongst the three sons. He justifies his decision by demonstrating that one arrow can be easily broken, but when three are together, it is much more difficult to break (remember reading those fables by Aeshop at school???).
Taro and Jiro cheer his decision extravagantly while Saburo contradicts this decision. Hidetora without a second thought banishes Saburo and distributes his kingdom among Taro and Jiro and decides to live with Taro.
Analogous to King Lear, Hidetora is unable to live with his sons Taro and Jiro. After being kicked around a bit he decided to find shelter in Saburo’s (who’s banished) godforsaken castle. A gory battle takes place between his sons and Hidetora’s army in the castle.
Taro’s wife, Lady Kaede develops a plot after Taro is killed in the battle and totally annexes any power Jiro ever had. Ran culminates when Hidetora goes insane and runs to the wilderness accompanied only by his jester, ’’Kyoami’’.
This adaption is very detailed, though it may not adhere completely to King Lear. Akira Kurosawa’s depiction of the battle is very gory and graphic. He was 75 and partially blind when he made this masterpiece.
An interesting thing to note: Kurosawa was then finding it hard to get financers. Instead of attempting a low budget film, he went ahead and made the most expensive movie in Japansese history. He is revered by film makers in America and Europe. Ironically, he ain’t a popular figure in Japan (very analogous to our own genius ’’Satyajit Ray’’).
Ran rocks....
PS: Enjoy the read. Will look forward to your ratings and comments. Cheers....