A. K.

Chris Marker goes to the set where Akira Kurosawa is shooting Ran and watches what happens. The filming is on the lower slopes of Mount Fuji. The documentary is not a making of; what interests Marker is waiting. The crew waits for the fog to lift, for the horses to settle, for the light to arrive. Kurosawa sits for hours doing nothing and then a single word starts the take. Chris Marker directs and wrote the narration himself. The subject is how Kurosawa works. Nobody on the set argues; the hierarchy is complete and the director's authority is not questioned. Marker neither praises nor criticises it, he only shows it. The most striking passages belong to the support crew: the horse handlers, the costume staff, the men at the flames. Marker keeps sliding the camera from the centre to the edge. Ran was the most expensive Japanese production of its time and Kurosawa was seventy five; the documentary keeps recalling both facts quietly. It is short, about seventy minutes. Marker is better known for essays such as La Jetée and Sans Soleil; this work sits on his calmer, observational side. Who it is for: viewers of Kurosawa and anyone interested in how films get made. Who it is not for: there is no event and no narrative, and the context is missing for a viewer who does not know Ran.