Ран: Эпическая сага Акиры Куросавы

1985 Japanese film directed by Akira Kurosawa
Japan
France It is a Japanese French venture The 1,400 uniforms and suits of armor used for the extras were designed by costume designer Emi Wada and Kurosawa, and were handmade by master tailors over more than two years. The film also used 200 horses. Kurosawa loved filming in lush and expansive locations, and most of Ran was shot amidst the mountains and plains of Mount Aso, Japan's largest active volcano. Kurosawa was granted permission to shoot at two of the country's most famous landmarks, the ancient castles at Kumamoto and Himeji. For the castle of Lady Sue's family, he used the ruins of the custom constructed Azusa castle, made by Kurosawa's production crew near Mount Fuji. Hidetora's third castle, which was burned to the ground, was a real building which Kurosawa built on the slopes of Mount Fuji. No miniatures were used for that segment, and Tatsuya Nakadai had to do the scene where Hidetora flees the castle in one take.

Kurosawa conceived of the idea that became Ran in the mid 1970s, when he read a parable about the Sengoku period warlord Mōri Motonari. Motonari was famous for having three sons, all incredibly loyal and talented. Kurosawa began imagining what would have happened had they been bad. Although the film eventually became heavily inspired by Shakespeare's play King Lear, Kurosawa became aware of the play only after he had started pre planning. According to him, the stories of Mōri Motonari and Lear merged in a way he was never fully able to explain. He wrote the script shortly after filming Dersu Uzala in 1975, and then "let it sleep" for seven years. During this time, he painted storyboards of every shot in the film (later included with the screenplay and available on the Criterion Collection DVD release) and then continued searching for funding. Following his success with 1980's Kagemusha, which he later considered a "dress rehearsal" or "dry run" for Ran, Kurosawa was finally able to secure backing from French producer Serge Silberman. Kurosawa once said "Hidetora is me", and there is evidence in the film that Hidetora serves as a stand in for Kurosawa. Roger Ebert agrees, arguing that Ran "may be as much about Kurosawa's life as Shakespeare's play". Many of his younger rivals boasted that he was finished. A year later, unable to secure any domestic funding and plagued by ill health, Kurosawa attempted suicide by slashing his wrists. Though he survived, his misfortune continued to plague him until the late 1980s. According to Stephen Prince, medical treatment and Mosfilm's offer to make a film in Russia (Dersu Uzala) helped Kurosawa's eventual "spiritual recovery." Kurosawa was influenced by the William Shakespeare play King Lear and borrowed elements from it. In Ran, Lady Kaede, Lady Sue, and Tsurumaru were all victims of Hidetora. Whereas in King Lear the character of Gloucester had his eyes gouged out by Lear's enemies, in Ran it was Hidetora himself who gave the order to blind Tsurumaru. The role of the Fool has been expanded into a major character (Kyoami). Kurosawa was concerned that Shakespeare gave his characters no past, and he wanted to give his version of King Lear a history. The complex and variant etymology for the word Ran used as the title has been variously translated as "chaos", "rebellion", or "revolt"; or to mean "disturbed" or "confused".

The filming of Ran began in 1983. He believed that, despite all of the technological progress of the 20th century, all people had learned was how to kill each other more efficiently. In Ran, the vehicle for apocalyptic destruction is the arquebus, an early firearm that was introduced to Japan in the 16th century. Arquebuses revolutionized samurai warfare. Kurosawa had already dealt with this theme in his previous film Kagemusha, in which the Takeda cavalry is destroyed by the arquebuses of the Oda and Tokugawa clans. In Ran, the battle of Hachiman Field is an illustration of this new kind of warfare. Saburo's arquebusiers annihilate Jiro's cavalry and drive off his infantry by engaging them from the woods, where the cavalry are unable to venture. Similarly, Taro and Saburo's assassination by a sniper also shows how individual heroes can be easily disposed of on a modern battlefield. Kurosawa also illustrates this new warfare with his camera. Instead of focusing on the warring armies, he frequently sets the focal plane beyond the action, so that in the film they appear as abstract entities.

The description of Hidetora in the first script was originally based on Toshiro Mifune.

While most of the characters in Ran are portrayed by conventional acting techniques, two performances are reminiscent of Japanese Noh theatre. Noh is a form of Japanese traditional theatre requiring highly trained actors and musicians where emotions are primarily conveyed by stylized conventional gestures. The heavy, ghost like make up worn by Tatsuya Nakadai's character, Hidetora, resembles the emotive masks worn by traditional Noh performers. The body language exhibited by the same character is also typical of Noh theatre: long periods of static motion and silence, followed by an abrupt, sometimes violent, change in stance. The character of Lady Kaede is also Noh influenced. The Noh treatment emphasizes the ruthless, passionate, and single minded natures of these two characters.

Craig Lysy, writing for Movie Music UK, commented on the strengths of the film soundtrack's composer for Kurosawa's purposes: "Tōru Takemitsu was Japan's preeminent film score composer and Kurosawa secured his involvement in 1976, during the project's early stages. Their initial conception of the score was to use tategoe, a "shrill voice" chant style without instrumentation. Over the intervening years, Kurosawa's conception of the score changed dramatically. As they began production his desire had changed 180 degrees, now insisting on a powerful Mahleresque orchestral score. Takemitsu responded with what many describe as his most romantic effort, one that achieved a perfect blending of Oriental and Occidental sensibilities." Takemitsu has stated that he was significantly influenced by the Japanese karmic concept of ma, interpreted as a surplus of energy surrounding an abundant void. As Lysy stated: "Takemitsu was guided in his efforts best summed up in the Japanese word ma, which suggests the incongruity of a void abounding with energy. He related: 'My music is like a garden, and I am the gardener. Listening to my music can be compared with walking through a garden and experiencing the changes in light, pattern and texture. Kurosawa had the orchestra play up to 40 takes of the music. In France, where it released on 18 September 1985, the film sold 813,081 tickets, grossing an estimated F
In the United States, where it released in December 1985, the film grossed $3,763,760 in its first four weeks of release. Later re releases between 2000 and 2016 grossed $528,357 in the United States and Canada, bringing its total North American gross to
In Germany, where it released in 1986, the film sold 222,862 tickets, grossing an estimated ($714,912). The film also grossed $18,692 in the United Kingdom, and $16,215 in Portugal, bringing the film's total estimated gross to approximately worldwide.

Ran was critically acclaimed upon its premiere. On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 96%, based on 89 reviews, and an average rating of 9/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "Akira Kurosawa's sprawling, epic take on King Lear should be required viewing for fans of westerns, war movies, or period films in general." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 97 out of 100, based on 21 critics, indicating "universal acclaim". Shawn Levy, of the Portland Oregonian wrote, "In many respects, it's Kurosawa's most sumptuous film, a feast of color, motion and sound: Considering that its brethren include Kagemusha, Seven Samurai and Dersu Uzala, the achievement is extraordinary." Writing for the Chicago Sun Times, Roger Ebert said, "Ran is a great, glorious achievement." In the San Francisco Examiner, G. Allen Johnson stated: "Kurosawa pulled out all the stops with Ran, his obsession with loyalty and his love of expressionistic film techniques allowed to roam freely." Writing for the San Francisco Chronicle, Bob Graham stated: "In Ran, the horrors of life are transformed by art into beauty. It is finally so moving that the only appropriate response is silence." Gene Siskel, writing for the Chicago Tribune, wrote: "The physical scale of Ran is overwhelming. It's almost as if Kurosawa is saying to all the cassette buyers of America, in a play on Clint Eastwood's phrase, 'Go ahead, ruin your night' – wait to see my film on a small screen and cheat yourself out of what a movie can be." Vincent Canby, writing for The New York Times, stated: "Though big in physical scope and of a beauty that suggests a kind of drunken, barbaric lyricism, Ran has the terrible logic and clarity of a morality tale seen in tight close up, of a myth that, while being utterly specific and particular in its time and place, remains ageless, infinitely adaptable." Roger Ebert awarded the film four out of four stars, with extended commentary, "Kurosawa (while directing Ran) often must have associated himself with the old lord as he tried to put this film together, but in the end he has triumphed, and the image I have of him, at 75, is of three arrows bundled together." In 2000, it was inducted into Ebert's Great Movies list. Notoriously acerbic critic John Simon of the National Review wrote, "I find it as an almost total failure by a genius in his old age". Michal Sragow, writing for Salon in 2000, summarized the Shakespearean origins of the play: "Kurosawa's Lear is a 16th century warlord who has three sons and a career studded with conquests. Kurosawa's genius is to tell his story so that every step suggests how wild and savage a journey it has been. At the start, this bold, dominating figure, now called Hidetora, is a sacred monster who wants to be a sort of warlord emeritus. He hopes to bequeath power to his oldest son while retaining his own entourage and emblems of command. He hasn't reckoned with the ambition of his successor or the manipulative skill of his heir's wife, who goes for the sexual and political jugular of anyone who invades her sphere."

Ran was completed too late to be entered at Cannes and had its premiere at Japan's first Tokyo International Film Festival. Kurosawa skipped the film's premiere, angering many in the Japanese film industry. As a result, it was not submitted as Japan's entry for the Best Foreign Language Film category of the Oscars. Serge Silberman tried to get it nominated as a French co production but failed. However, American director Sidney Lumet helped organize a campaign to have Kurosawa nominated as Best Director. Ran was nominated for the Academy Awards for art direction, cinematography, costume design (which it won), and Kurosawa's direction. It was also nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film. In Japan, Ran was conspicuously not nominated for "Best Picture" at the Awards of the Japanese Academy. However, it won two prizes, for best art direction and best music score, and received four other nominations, for best cinematography, best lighting, best sound, and best supporting actor (Hitoshi Ueki, who played Saburo's patron, Lord Fujimaki). Ran won two awards from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, for best foreign language film and best make up artist, and was nominated for best cinematography, best costume design, best production design, and best screenplay–adapted. Despite its limited commercial success at the time of its release, the film's accolades have improved greatly, and it is now regarded as one of Kurosawa's masterpieces. Ran won Best Director and Best Foreign Film awards from the National Board of Review, a Best Film award and a Best Cinematography award (Takao Saitō, Shōji Ueda, and Asakazu Nakai) from the National Society of Film Critics, a Best Foreign Language Film award from the New York Film Critics Circle, a Best Music award (Toru Takemitsu) and a Best Foreign Film award from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, a Best Film award and a Best Cinematography award from the Boston Society of Film Critics, a Best Foreign Feature award from the Amanda Awards from Norway, a Blue Ribbon Award for Best Film, a Best European Film award from the Bodil Awards, a Best Foreign Director award from the David di Donatello Awards, a Joseph Plateau Award for Best Artistic Contribution, a Director of the Year award and a Foreign Language Film of the Year award from the London Critics Circle Film Awards, a Best Film, a Best Supporting Actor (Hisashi Igawa) and a Best Director from the Mainichi Film Concours, and an OCIC award from the San Sebastian Film Festival. In the British Film Institute's 2002 Sight & Sound polls of the greatest films ever made, Ran ranked 41st in director's poll. In 2007, the film was ranked at No. 28 by The Guardians readers' poll on its list of "40 greatest foreign films of all time". The film was selected in BBC's list of 100 greatest foreign language films by 209 critics of 43 countries around the world in 2018.