Critics reviews

“Ran” stands as a cross-cultural testament to timeless storytelling, where Kurosawa’s indomitable spirit shapes a profound meditation on power, chaos, and the enduring resonance of Shakespearean influence.

[Kurosawa] transforms the Bard’s eloquence in a form of cinematic thunder, a spectacle for mind and heart. What makes Ran impossible to forget, or avoid... is the entirety of its achievement, the sheer monumental size of the production, both physically and in the strikes of its drama that seize you so tightly.

Legacies can be extinguished in an instant, but respect must be paid. RAN certainly has a homicidal stateliness about it; the film feels exquisitely brooded over, drained of all spontaneity, as if even the grey clouds had no choice in the matter. It plays closer to the operatic insularity of Tarkovsky's THE SACRIFICE than the CGI epics that would follow in its wake. It's definitely the last of its species.

Cinema on this scale is a rarity, but Ran has much more to it than grand vision. It has, despite the madness, an unusual clarity of perspective. In its fusion of ideas, it finds something unique.

[A] stunning free transformation of King Lear, one of the great screen adaptations of Shakespeare... If anything, Ran is even darker and more pessimistic than the original.

[Shakespeare's] ‘King Lear’ provides the backbone of this story... But ‘Ran’ is every inch a director’s movie, the emotional intensity of its story enriched by Kurosawa’s unique visual mastery.

By turns achingly delicate and bracingly violent, Ran is the last great masterpiece of Akira Kurosawa... Moments of poetic delicacy... give way to sequences of battle so intense and violent that they beggar the imagination.

They don’t make them like Akira Kurosawa’s magisterial “Ran” anymore, but the truth is, they didn’t really make them like this regal epic back then either... What’s remarkable about “Ran” is that the drama enhances the spectacle the same way the spectacle bolsters the drama. Few other directors had Kurosawa’s ability to convey the intimate as well as the epic, to handle stillness as well as violence.

Ran represents the color/widescreen zenith of Kurosawa's genius for spectacle. Each of Hidetora's sons is color-coded and every frame looks uncommonly vivid, creating tension even during moments of stillness. There are also remarkably few close-ups for such a dialogue-heavy drama, with most scenes playing out in carefully composed masters judiciously intercut with alternate angles, the latter usually still having been shot at some distance from the actors.

By means of personal disclaimer: I first saw it on a remastered 35mm print in 2000, and left the theater convinced I had just witnessed the greatest film of all time. While this mode of list-making is less of a personal prerogative with each passing year, Kurosawa's film continues to embody a rigor (evidenced hardest by A.K.), of light, sound and color, that to me remains unmatched, disquieting in its superhuman totality.

Ran roughly translates to "confusion" or "chaos" — the chaos, critics have long understood, of the film's erratic, turbulent war. But it isn't difficult to imagine the production itself overwhelmed by disorder and turmoil. Thousands of costumed extras, hundreds of trained horses, a small army of technicians and assistants on call: A more ambitious film had never been made in Japan, and as a logistical feat alone it staggers. You can hardly mount a project like this without havoc.

From its opening tableau to the cosmic closing image of sightless humanity at the edge of the abyss, Ran is a work of cold anger and stark splendor.