When you see a making-of-documentary, you expect to see cast interviews, director’s rambling and kiss asses over-analyzing. Thanks to cinemas great poet, Chris Marker, you get none of that. What you get instead is Chris Marker’s gentle and distant camera closely observing the realities of the movie set while quoting Kurosawa and talking about the beauty of it all.

No other documentary will spend so much time on the extras flirting with each other or staying warm in between takes. It shows you how important these people are to the film and it’s nice to see some attention moved away from the main forces of Tatsuya Nakadai and Akira Kurosawa. I’m not sure if it’s a documentary, but more of a reflection of his feelings on set and what he saw. It’s great to see Kurosawa exposed as the artist he is by showing last minute ideas, his naps and him politically correcting Nakadai on his screwed-up lines.

This movie is worth the price of the now out-of-print Criterion edition of Ran. It’s great to know that the constantly traveling Marker got a chance to stick around for Kurosawa’s masterwork.