Staggering battle sequences, thrones of blood and the spirit of Macbeth are abroad in one of the greatest screen adaptations of Shakespeare
The re-release of Akira Kurosawa’s 1985 epic Ran (the word means “chaos”) is an opportunity to see this stunning free transformation of King Lear, one of the great screen adaptations of Shakespeare. Perhaps it was the defamiliarising effect of Kurosawa’s film which, for me, opened up the meaning of Lear: a kind of human arrogance and self-importance which, in the face of mortality, needs to believe the world will be a divided and diminished thing when we are gone.
As well as Lear, Ran draws on the dark spirit of Macbeth, with its images of a scheming wife, a throne of blood and massed soldiery: fatally misleading and ominous, as in Dunsinane. After a lifetime of brutal rule, ageing feudal lord Hidetora (Tatsuya Nakadai) tells his three...
The re-release of Akira Kurosawa’s 1985 epic Ran (the word means “chaos”) is an opportunity to see this stunning free transformation of King Lear, one of the great screen adaptations of Shakespeare. Perhaps it was the defamiliarising effect of Kurosawa’s film which, for me, opened up the meaning of Lear: a kind of human arrogance and self-importance which, in the face of mortality, needs to believe the world will be a divided and diminished thing when we are gone.
As well as Lear, Ran draws on the dark spirit of Macbeth, with its images of a scheming wife, a throne of blood and massed soldiery: fatally misleading and ominous, as in Dunsinane. After a lifetime of brutal rule, ageing feudal lord Hidetora (Tatsuya Nakadai) tells his three...
- 3/31/2016
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
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