Ran

Ran (1985) is about an old warlord dividing his lands among his three sons and everything collapsing. Hidetora is seventy and no longer wants to fight. He shares the country between his sons and puts the eldest at the head. The youngest says it is a mistake and is banished. Before long the two elder sons throw their father out and go to war with each other. The source is Shakespeare's King Lear, which Kurosawa combined with the story of the Japanese warlord Mōri Motonari. Lear has three daughters; here there are three sons and a war. The real villain is a daughter in law named Kaede. Her family was destroyed by Hidetora and she has waited thirty years. She drives the story. Kurosawa had the idea in the early seventies and a screenplay was ready by 1975. But finding money for a period epic on that scale took another seven years; the funding came in 1982 from two producers, one Japanese and one French. During those waiting years he painted every shot of the film in oils. By the time shooting began his eyesight had almost entirely gone; his assistants framed the shots, using those paintings as their guide. His wife of thirty nine years, Yōko Yaguchi, died on 1 February 1985 during production. He stopped for one day to mourn and returned to filming the next. The costumes were woven by hand and took two years to prepare. In the great battle the sound is cut away entirely; only the music remains and the battle is watched in silence. It runs 162 minutes. Good for: epic cinema, Kurosawa, and Shakespeare adaptations. Less good for: it is long, the battles are bloody, and the film offers no hope at all.