Ran (1985)

Director: Akira Kurosawa

Writers: Akira Kurosawa and Hideo Oguni and Masato Ide, based on a play by William Shakespeare

Stars: Tatsuya Nakadai, Akira Terao, Jinpachi Nezu, Daisuke Ryu, Mieko Harada, Mansai Nomura, Yoshiko Miyazaki, Hisashi Igawa

We meet the warlord Hidetora (Tatsuya Nakadai) as a pleasant old man, satisfied with his success in life, desiring only to bring peace to the land by dividing his kingdom among his three sons (Akira Terao, Jinpachi Nezu, and Daisuke Ryu) and to spend his waning years spending time with each in turn.

 

Soon, the colossal hubris of the man becomes apparent. 

He disowns the one son who has the integrity to tell him to his face that his idyllic plan will never work. 

Hidetora should have listened.

 

After a lifetime of subjugating others with his armies, he believes that his desires will come to pass simply because he wishes it.

 

However, his remaining sons have been raised in the house of a warlord during a time of constant warfare, and they have no intention of living in peace. 

Rather, they fall upon each other in a struggle for supremacy, turning the old man out as an inconvenience. 

As Hidetora suffers, we are also made to realize how richly he is reaping the seeds that he has sown through two important characters. 

Lady Kaede (Mieko Harada), who manipulates one of his sons into facilitating the downfall of his house, watched her family murdered by Hidetora. 

Tsurumaru (Mansai Nomura), a young blind man who lives a wretched, solitary existence, suffered the plucking out of his eyes at Hidetora's command when he was a young boy. 

Growing increasingly senile, Hidetora wanders through a land in chaos as the suppressed passions generated by the horrors he perpetrated bear full fruit.

 

This is a complex, dramatic, and beautiful film.