Ran

This is the best movie I’ve ever seen and it really isn’t very close. I genuinely can’t articulate what’s so incredible about it in a review because it’s genuinely everything. The whole movie. There isn’t a single scene that isn’t better than the best scenes from 90% of the movies I’ve seen. Nonetheless, I’m going to quickly mention a few specific things that I really love about it. The massacre at the Third Castle is the best and most horrifying battle scene ever done. The entire sequence where Kurosawa cuts the sound and just leaves you to watch it with music in the background is some mouth-agape shit.  What a way to end the movie too. That final scene is genuinely the perfect cherry on top, I love how it leaves you with an image of Buddha - the characters talk about and mythicise their deity the entire movie, but Buddha is only seen for the first time at the very end, seeming so monumentally indifferent to everything. The setting is also masterfully constructed from the very first shot. In no other movie am I so completely transported into the setting as in Ran. Every landscape is filled with so much beauty and depth it feels fantastical, like the idyllic world your imagination creates when you’re reading a book - which tracks as Ran is an adaptation of a play. On that note, the acting is also incredible at achieving its purpose. In almost every movie, actors take a very naturalistic approach to their roles, but Ran is acutely aware of its source material in all of its performances. The monologuing and dramatic weight behind each one only works so perfectly because of the setting and story the movie tries to tell. Lady Kaede is also such a good individual performance (alongside Tatsuya Nakadai as Hidetora obv). Her influence was one of the best additions to the movie, serving as the perfect foil to the outward brutish violence of the other characters (and potentially as somewhat of an analogy to Lady Macbeth). Her perspective sort of exposes the hypocrisy behind the entire machine of war - Kurogone’s line ‘Such is the vanity of women’ is almost farcical in the context of the entire movie. I also have to point out how interesting of a decision it was to present Hidetora (the films depiction of Lear) with so many differences from the play. Lear in the play is comparably harmless and foolish - Hidetora is undoubtedly a fool, but he was a violent war lord his whole life, someone who’s brutality shaped the world and lives of every other character. It is more than merely ironic that he is betrayed by his sons - his whole life he taught them to act in the very way they would against him. I feel like Ran is both the most and least inspiring for a filmmaker to watch. On one hand, it shows you just how high the ceiling for film as a medium really is, but on the other hand, Kurosawa does NOT give you any tips on how to reach his level. I genuinely have no idea how you would even start making a movie like this.  TL;DR - I’ve changed my mind. You don’t deserve to watch this as your first Akira Kurosawa movie. Go watch Seven Samurai first or something, then watch this and realise that he is the greatest director to ever live.