Ran

*“It is the gods who weep. They see us killing each other over and over since time began. They can't save us from ourselves.” -Tango* Ran has multiple meanings in Japanese but it most commonly means chaos which is a perfect name for this film.  This film is a masterpiece and is known as one of the greatest films of all time. It’s one of the most visually stunning films I’ve ever laid my eyes on, each shot could be taken and hung in the Louvre as a piece of art.  Akira Kurosawa X Shakespeare’s King Lear is a match made in heaven. Kurosawa takes the story of King Lear and sets it in 16th century Japan, posing the question of why are humans driven to cause war and kill each other.  We have Hidetora a seventy year old war lord who splits his kingdom among his three sons. His oldest son Taro inherits the largest castle while Jiro get the second largest castle. While Saburo is offered the third castle he declines realizing if they get the castles then the brothers will fight for power causing death and war to arise until one remains. Taking offense to this Hidetora banishes Saburo from the kingdom.  Following the diving up of power Taro who wants his father to give him full control, banishes his father from the land, and once he goes to his second son he learns he can’t stay unless his guards stay outide the castle. So he heads off to the third castle where he is then ambushed with a display of brutality that Hidetora had committed when he was younger. After the guilt of feeling responsible for his men’s death he is left a broken man, and they let him live but Jiro takes this opportunity to get Taro killed proving Saburo’s point.  This films proves that lust and greed for power can cause a family to become warring armies fighting each other to the death. And shows that legacy will be forgotten through that greed forgetting their Father and his accomplishments of peace through war by creating a new war over again just for that same power, later being forgotten by time.  Kurosawa shows that this lust for power is a fruitless endeavor showing that all parties of the Ichimonji family die off one way or another throughout the film. Even when Suburo goes to war with Jiro just to get his father back he causes so much death to win that battle and ends up getting killed by a sniper not even knowing the battle is won, causing Hidetora to die by grief of all that he’s lost.  Lady Kaede shows the other side of war, the revenge side, became a lady Macbeth of sorts trying to use the sons ambitions to become the Great Lord but in the end her scheming was all a plot to destroy the house of Ichimonji for what Hidetora had done in the past, and she succeeded by getting all of them killed in some way, but it ends with her death as well.  This films proves that everyone always looks at the spoils of war believing that once they have conquered and defeated everything in their way that they’ll end up with everything they’ve dreamt of, but Kurosawa shows the ruins of war, the death and destruction of man kind all because someone’s greed and in the end nobody wins.