(Film Review) The Fall of Tradition in Kurosawa's Ran

The Fall of Tradition in Kurosawa’s Ran

(Film Review) 

            Kurosawa’s films can be epic war dramas like Seven Samurai or small personal struggles like Ikiru. In Ran, Kurosawa blends both narratives together to create a film with a complete variety of themes to address. The story is immediately reminiscent of William Shakespeare’s great play King Lear, but the modifications made through Kurosawa’s own talent and Japanese folklore makes Ran quite a unique story. Though the film may call on earlier tales for inspiration, the plot itself breaks many conventions in its narrative structure and the characters themselves seem set on disrupting every common tradition they can.

            The one major difference between King Lear and Ran is that the “king” of Ran is/was as violent and power hungry as his sons Taro and Jiro that take over his position. Including so many scenes that remind the viewer that Hidetora burned castles to the ground and destroyed families keeps a formidable barrier between Hidetora and redemption. He even seems to be aware of this himself when he meets with Jiro’s first wife Sue in the second castle. Hidetora burned her castle and killed her parents and yet Sue won’t show anger towards him because of her Buddhist beliefs. As Hidetora says, her smile hurts the most to see. All of the other survivors of his conquests refuse to punish him directly as well. Kaede ultimately plans and succeeds in destroying the Ichimonji family, but her revenge is slow and subtle. The only interaction between Kaede and Hidetora is when Hidetora pledges to serve Taro. Hidetora makes a comment on how Kaede is controlling Taro and kicks over the candle between him and Kaede. This action and the subsequent shot focused on the fallen candle seems to suggest that Hidetora wouldn’t mind burning the castle again and shows little regret toward what he did to Kaede’s family. Tsurumaru is the only survivor of Hidetora’s crimes to survive the rest of the film. He attempts to follow his sister Sue’s Buddhist sense of forgiveness but judging by the final shot it appears he is unsuccessful. To start with, he loses his sister to the whims of Kaede, a fellow survivor so bent on destroying the Ichimonjis that she sacrifices another victim to take down Jiro. The last sequence of the film has Tsurumaru holding the Buddhist scroll of his sister out before him as he almost steps over a cliff. He catches himself but loses the scroll off the side of the cliff in the process. We see a close-up of the image of Buddha on the rocks below and cut back to a long shot of Tsurumaru alone with a setting sun behind him and the sounds of Tsurumaru’s flute in the background. The flute had been his only way of expressing his anger towards Hidetora and its presence here shows that Tsurumaru has not forgiven him. Despite all that Hidetora goes through in this film, he never finds the redemption he truly needed. Kurosawa breaks the tradition of emphasizing redemption and instead reemphasizes the pain of those that suffered from Hidetora’s rule.

            Kurosawa does not only break tradition in terms of the narrative, he also breaks the tradition of his own epic film battles. The first major battle is entirely silent, save for the ominous music playing in the background. The assault on the third castle is instead punctuated by a montage of red scenes from the red flags of Jiro’s troops to the bloody wounds of Hidetora’s warriors. The sound only returns once Taro is suddenly shot from a tower in the distance. Doing this accentuates the immense betrayal Jiro commits by having his brother killed.

The sudden death of Taro also shakes Hidetora out of his trance and allows him to fully face the realization that his sons have been trying to permanently remove him from potential power. At the same time, Hidetora also fails to meet Jiro’s expectations that he will commit seppuku as others in the castle had already done. We also expect Hidetora to fight at least somewhat here as he had shown off his excellent bow skills earlier to protect Kyoami. However, he instead just sits cross-legged on the floor and stares straight ahead.

            In Ran, the costume design itself also seems to mock tradition. The great lord Hidetora is dressed quite differently to every other character in ran. The actor is dressed in grand flowing robes and his face is masked with so much makeup he looks like a character out of a Noh play. At first, this actually seems to bring honor and wisdom to his character because he appears so regal centered in every frame above the rest at council with him. However, as the story develops, his bright clothes become dirty and grey while his mind deteriorates. The mask of make-up demeans and humiliates him from his former position.

            Initially Hidetora compares himself to an old boar, tough and inedible. The film actually starts with men on horseback hunting the same boar Hidetora is referring to. It’s worth noting that the soundtrack here is unusually ominous in direct contrast to the light banter that follows with Hidetora and his council of family and comrades. Contrary to Hidetora’s boasting, it is clear that the boar actually represents his susceptibility to attack within his own home. The boar is arguably a pure and defenseless icon, hunted here to signify that nothing is safe or sacred for that matter.

            Hidetora himself never truly seems to follow the tradition of his world. As his youngest son Saburo points out, his initial goal is to suddenly put an end to a cycle of war and violence that he himself participated in. However, the problem is that he thinks he can do this by following the tradition of passing on his rule to his eldest son. The one tradition he decides to follow throws everything into chaos. He tries to assert that this will work by setting up an analogy to show the strength in numbers. He first gives each a son an arrow and asks them to break it. They do so easily. When he hands his first son Taro a bundle of arrows and asks him to break it he cannot. The second son, Jiro also tries and fails. Up to this point, we watch a very traditional metaphor of strength and numbers and are prepared as an audience to accept Hidetora’s wisdom. However, Saburo disrupts the whole routine by taking the bundle and breaking it over his knee. The traditional metaphor is shattered and the audience is taken out of the trance. Here Saburo not only literally breaks a common metaphor apart, he also disrespects his father’s authority by arguing that the brothers’ unity was never very strong to begin with.

            This is also arguably the only place where Saburo breaks tradition. However this act and everything that comes after is also ultimately an attempt to save his father. As a result, Saburo is the one of the few to maintain a high level of honor alongside advisor Tango who is also unbreakably loyal to Hidetora. Although Saburo is absent for the majority of the second act, when he does return he is always pictured on horseback with a full set of armor. He looks just as regal as his father once did and arguably more so than Jiro who fights back against him.

            To return to costumes for a moment, it is important to look at just how Kurosawa has chosen to dress the three sons and their respective armies. Saburo is blue, Jiro is red, and Taro is gold. As previously mentioned, Hidetora wears white and this makes sense as his clothes turn grey to mark a physical change as he undergoes his own spiritual transformation. Saburo’s blue colors mark that he is the noble, good son that consistently tries to honor his father despite being misunderstood. Jiro is marked by angry and jealous red colors to match his surge to overthrow his brother Taro and to suppress the rise of his younger brother Saburo. Taro is a difficult character to assess as he doesn’t live for too long before Jiro’s counselor shoots him down. The gold at first seems to represent regality and prosperity. However, this ends up being a false symbol and Kaede’s chastising proves that the gold really serves as yellow cowardice since Taro fails to assert himself as a leader.

            Indeed Kaede herself seems to be the one really leading all of the antagonistic forces in this film. In the scene she has with Taro and Hidetora as Hidetora signs the contract, Kaede talks the most and informs Hidetora of what he is being presented with. The camera also tends to linger on Kaede’s side of the room who is also dressed much more vibrantly than Taro as well. She asserts her dominance in an even stronger fashion with Jiro when she locks him in his room, tackles him and nicks both sides of his neck to torture him into telling her what she wants to hear. Kurosawa then makes the shocking decision to have Kaede sexually force herself upon Jiro and essentially rape him. This is also implied not once, but arguably twice as another scene shows Jiro’s counselor walking in on the Kaede finishing an almost identical scene before she precedes to demand Sue’s head be cut off. It certainly takes the villainous female archetype to a whole new level not typically seen in film. Also, it’s worth noting here that Kaede’s rise to villainy almost works in a sense as a foil to Hidetora’s fall from villainy. With Hidetora, the audience wants him to see the error of his ways and reunite with his son though the constant reminders of his actions suggest he doesn’t deserve the reunion. For Kaede, we learn early on of her tragic history and encourage her to seek revenge to a degree until she decides to take out her vengeance and the most innocent character of Sue by violently removing her head and morbidly displaying it.

            The only character the audience firmly wants to succeed is Saburo. Though he appears rash and ill-mannered at first, Saburo quickly shows that he is one of the wisest and most caring characters in the film through his devotion to Hidetora. With that being said, it is indeed a wonder as to why Saburo is killed so suddenly and noiselessly. In a way, it echoes the death of Taro. Whereas Taro’s death brought noise rushing back to Hidetora, Saburo’s death brought crushing silence. The silence is in fact so forceful that it kills Hidetora himself not long after. Though it is in keeping with the King Lear source material, Kurosawa’s alteration to the king character make it all the more tragic. Hidetora had gone from a complete monster to the peace-seeking individual he had set out to be when he gave up his throne. He’s ready to apologize to Saburo and move on, but before he can even do so. Saburo is suddenly shot without so much as a cry from Saburo. It’s actually a quite graceless death as Saburo simply falls from his horse without any kind of fanfare from the soundtrack. It takes Saburo’s warriors a while to even realize he has died. The noblest character gets the least noble death in yet another break from narrative tradition.

            Ran embraces older stories but breaks every routine character trait or narrative plot point it comes across. The end scene with the Buddha scroll falling in particular lends to the sense that Kurosawa is essentially ending tradition with this film. As one of his last movies it certainly makes sense that as an esteemed director he would want to make one film that combined all of his style and character but also reversed old tropes in order to create new meaning.