The final film in my
analysis of the Chambara films of Akira Kurosawa is the Shakespearean epic, Ran.
Kurosawa’s last Samurai epic encapsulates the end of the Samurai and
contemplatively reflects on his own career. Ran asks questions about
aging, mortality, and legacy. The answers that Kurosawa gives is, like a lot of
his work, multifaceted and emotionally bittersweet. Yet, during this
introspection, Kurosawa hits these points with a melancholy that haunts the
film with a lifetime of longing and regret. In this metatextual analysis,
Kurosawa shows even in his Twilight years, at the end of a glorious career, while
going blind and grieving his wife, he is still a better director than most others
on their best day.
PLOT
Set in Feudal Japan, an
aging warlord goes on his last wild boar hunt with his sons before determining
his successor. He decides to give each of his son’s one of the three Castles in
the shogunate and naming his eldest son the new Daimyo. In exchange, the father
plans on living with each son periodically throughout the year, while retaining
his title, and 30 of his best warriors as an honorarium. His youngest son,
knowing his brothers’ ambitions, speaks out against this decision, and for his perceived
insolence, is banished by his father. As
the plan is set in motion, the two older brothers alienate and isolate their
father, sequestering him in the empty third castle (previously offered to the
youngest son) which they then besiege in a combined coordinated attack. This
betrayal causes the old warlord to have a mental breakdown and sets in motion
an internal struggle between the brothers that results in the complete annihilation
of their family.
HISTORICAL CONTEXT
It at least needs to be
acknowledged, that while Kurosawa created some of the greatest pieces of
Japanese cinema ever to be photographed. But by the late 1970’s, Kurosawa was
not only considered to be difficult to work with (due to his perfectionism),
but many of the younger up and coming directors believed that he had lost his
skills. This caused an inability to get domestic Japanese funding, and began
the international funding of his projects beginning with Kagemusha,
continuing through Ran
Ran,
while not Kurosawa’s last film, is his last epic Samurai film. It was first
conceived in the 1970’s, but the aforementioned budget concerns, and a reduction
of Kurosawa’s social capital at the time, always kept the film from being made.
It wasn’t until the release and success of Kagemusha improving
his international recognition, and thus bolstering his reputation, that he was
able to secure funding from French Film Producer Serge Silberman, for Ran
Production
Kurosawa’s original
vision stemmed from a historical Samurai with three sons’ during the Sengoku
period in Japan (same period as Kagemusha). By all historical accounts,
these sons were both moral and loyal to their father. Yet, Kurosawa wondered what would happen if
they weren’t. This provided the narrative spark for Kurosawa and long-time
writing partners Hideo Oguni and Masato Ide to begin the story. Along the way,
Kurosawa and the writing team leaned more into King Lear than originally
expected, but allowing some considerable differences with the gender swapped
children, and a longer and more complicated backstory for a lot of the
characters which also served as a parallel of Kurosawa’s
own life. As Roger Ebert (2000) wrote in his “Great Movies”
review: “Ran may be as much about Kurosawa’s life as Shakespeare’s play.”,
Hidetori being the director’s surrogate for him to contemplate life, morality,
and disappointment. When looking at Tatsuya Nakadai’s performance through this prism,
his choices that express horror and betrayal can be easily interpreted as the
inner turmoil of Kurosawa with the film industry.
This turmoil is nowhere
more symbolically expressed than in the siege of the third castle sequence at
the midway point in the film. This sequence shows the slow burning down of the third
castle by Hidetori’s first and second born sons (a shot that was done
practically without miniatures, against the slope of Mt. Fuji). After failing
to find a sword to commit Seppuku as his forces are being overrun and his
castle set ablaze by flaming arrows, Hidetori grief stricken by this betrayal,
exits the burning building rather than succumbing to the flames. Captured in a
single unbroken wide shot of actor Tatsuya Nakadai walking down the stairs of
the castle, the look of bewildered mania frozen on his face becomes the
metaphor for Kurosawa’s feelings of the Japanese cinema at the time. Couple
this with his previous suicide attempt, and resistance to his films in Japan
during the latter half of his career, this sequence plays like an allegory for the
modern film culture of the time forcefully pushing Kurosawa to the fringes,
believing him to be obsolete.
Cinematography
During
the production of Ran, the composition of shots were comprised of
Kurosawa’s storyboard paintings (as he had done in Kagemusha) he had
created years earlier. Frequent collaborators: Takao Saito, Masaharu Ueda, and Asakazu
Nakai collectively shot Ran using the storyboard paintings as a
foundation, as Kurosawa couldn’t assist them because by the time principal
photography began, his eyesight had almost completely deteriorated; only
allowing him to set up shots with the help of assistants.
From a disability
perspective, the adaptations Kurosawa had to make to shoot this film,
predominantly relying on and stitching together wide shots from three simultaneously
running cameras, crafts a cinematic language that is rarely seen, and is never
perfected. The simple example of this is the burning of the third castle. The
sequence is done primarily in a single wide shot deceptively edited together to
look like it was shot in real time; from ignition by the flaming arrows to the smoke-filled
embers of the castle’s remnants, you feel the progression of time as the scene
continues. Kurosawa was willing to burn down the entire set for a single shot
that he could not repeat. Yet, because of his growing impairment, due to his
acquired disability, he kept the camera back, capturing the full scope of the
events rather than focus on the reactions on the faces of the principal
characters. Like a lot of successful Disabled people, they are often praised
for their ingenuity, when because of the necessity of adapting to the
Able-bodied culture, they did not really have much of a choice to exist, or in
Kurosawa’s case, be able to still direct.
For clarification, I
realize that Kurosawa was well known for his affinity for long lens and wide
shots prior to Ran. However, it was his acquiring of his disability
through aging, that caused him to rely on these shots more while still finding
a way to make them dynamic and compelling. To that end, his Cinematography team
earned a Oscar nomination, and Kurosawa earning his first and only directing
nomination for their work on Ran.
Budget and Accolades
At the time of
production, Ran was one of the most expensive Japanese films in history.
With a budget of 11 million dollars, the filmmakers and crew used 1400 extras
and 200 horses while shooting mostly on location around Mt. Fuji. Making only
19 million dollars at the box office, it was not seen as a financial success.
Yet, the critical buzz around
the film was hard to ignore. The film is still considered required viewing
for anyone interested in the intersecting, albeit eclectic genres, of literary
criticism, war films, westerns, and period dramas.
Like Kagemusha,
the film was praised for its use of color (based on painted storyboards).
Kurosawa took this a step further with Ran, using actual bright red
paint for blood, liberally slathering it on Extras, pooling it beneath them,
and across back of set dressings to represent arterial spray. Many reviews comment
on the feast of colors that Kurosawa indulges in his final two Samurai films.
Nominated for four
Academy awards, it only won for Costuming. The Nomination of Kurosawa for best
director (the film wasn’t nominated in either best film or foreign language
film) was not so much because the academy believed in Kurosawa’s brilliance
(otherwise they would have nominated him years earlier), but because of a
“write in” campaign spearheaded by Sidney Lumet. Which seems, at Kurosawa’s age,
and this time, more like a legacy nomination more than anything; meaning
Kurosawa was not given the nomination based upon his work on Ran alone,
but because of all of his other previously unrecognized work.
SOCIAL ANALYIS
Ran
is
a meditation on aging and death. In
western society, particularly in the US, we are obsessed with youth and
vitality while ignoring the natural process of aging and death. Often, aging and our inevitable demise is met
with rejection and denial. Part of this is a result of Capitalism
creating markets through the advertising of beauty, body and health products which
reinforce the cultural desire to stay young and fit; a combination that has
become synonymous with relevant, valued, and important. We don’t have to look
further than the COVID-19 pandemic (which is still ravaging the planet with The
US recently reaching 1 million dead) to see the value we place on the aged and
elderly. In the US, if you are not a “productive” member of society (contribute
to the reproduction of Capitalism) your value as a living human being is
diminished.
Yet,
regardless of this progressive dehumanization of the populace periodically
through the aging process, there is a consistent lack
of preparedness when considering aging in the US. A lot
of the people are working longer and do not have enough to retire comfortably,
let alone die in a manner that gives them peace and dignity. Around
70% of people die in Hospitals and while there is an increasing trend of
people dying in other places, a person is likely to die within the healthcare
system that is full of alienated cruelty to
the elderly, especially in the last years of life.
Aging,
Masculinity and Capitalism
Much of this lack of
preparedness and death location is a function of several social factors surrounding
capitalism. Firstly, there is the natural exploitation built into capitalism
which makes it difficult to save for retirement and prepare for death. If you can
save for death, it is usually by entering into the exploitative insurance
market. Additionally, pay gaps, inflation,
equity tied to homeownership, and several other viable criticisms based on racism
and Sexism in
connection with capitalism are also factors. Yet, one of the contributing
factors that gets less attention is the way the culture of work and one’s self-identity
is cultivated by their job. However, the question remains: if that culture of
work is conditioned to skew younger (especially in certain types of service
industry jobs), what happens to that identity when you can no longer be defined
by your work?
Many people in the early
days of retirement struggle, as Hidetori struggles in Ran, with an
identity crisis. For Hidetori, he struggles with his changing status after
naming his first born as a successor. The film clearly depicts him having difficulty
with this transition. It is almost as if he is expecting to run a puppet regime
behind the scenes, with his son as a figurehead. Additionally, Hidetori’s plan
to live with each of his sons for part of the year sounds like the demented pipedream
of a pretentious upper middle class white dude that believes his children owe
him something; allowing him to live the rest of his days “in the manner by which
he has become accustomed.” This mentality, like Hidetori’s, is built on the narcissism,
vanity and ego inherit in the toxic parts of masculinity and its relationship
to capitalism.
Masculinity in capitalism
is intricately tied to work. Much of the constructed idea of masculinity in
western societies are built around the idea of work and the provider myth.
Thus, the inevitable release from one’s job can be perceived
as a loss of identity and lead to more negative
psychological impacts on cisgendered men than cisgendered women. This is further complicated by our culture also
valuing productivity only though the lens of capitalism, so even if people retire,
they do not feel valued unless they are part of the economy. This leads to
older individuals taking contingent work (part time/seasonal) after retirement,
ultimately taking similar jobs than those that are just entering the workforce
or volunteering their time just to seem useful to themselves and the overall
structure.
Ageism
By developing a culture
of work that skews younger and becomes a part of our master status (Social
positions by which we are chiefly defined), we then build systems to reinforce
those cultural norms. Not only is there a
lack of representation of old age in media (either
older characters being played by younger actors or vice versa),
but when older actors are in roles they are either digitally “de-aged” and/or
use make-up to make them look younger, while still regulating them the
supportive and parental roles. Also, many film and TV roles that show older
individuals in occupations, often to highlight their incompetence. According to
Collins (2000) these are examples of “controlling images” that contribute to systemic
Ageism the United States is founded upon.
Ageism is the individual
and systemic forms of inequality and discrimination a person may experience
because they are considered old by a particular social order. While we have several anti-discrimination
laws to minimize the discrimination felt by the elderly, the operation of these
systems and the culture that they embody, allow for the maintenance of this
discrimination. From early retirement incentive programs, tying job competence
to physical ability, and bridge jobs, these mechanisms are designed to remove older
workers from the labor force based upon “The life course” approach. This is the
recognition of the developmental changes based in biology that mold human
behavior from birth to death (Quadagno 2002). The unfortunate result of this
approach, baked into our cultural norms and everyday behaviors, is an invalidation
and contempt for our elderly, both in the very systems that we exist within and
give us social value, but also reinforced through interpersonal communication.
A lot of interpersonal
communication with the elderly for people in the US is also unfortunately
connected to the negative halo effect. This is the idea that because of a lack
of perceived attractiveness, there is an assumption that an individual will not
have other positive qualities about them. Therefore, because we often do not
see the elderly as attractive, (beauty is a youthful construct after all), we devalue
their knowledge skills and experiences. Instead, we consistently see the
elderly either as a burden or a nuisance. We often take less time to speak with
them, as well as infantilize them with childish speech or baby talk. With all
these systemic and interpersonal barriers is it any wonder, coupled with a
culture that has valued and monetized youthfulness through capitalism, we
resist and deny the realities of aging? Because, based upon the culture we have
created, to age is to accept death, and death is the end.
The contemplation of
Death in Ran
In
looking at the systematic study of religion, that is the study of religion as a
social institution, the basic need that all religions satisfy is that it
answers the morality and mortality question(s). One of the knowing questions we
as humans must answer is the value of humanity, and what happens when we die;
essentially because the two truths of existence are that we are living and living
things eventually die. Religion, especially western bureaucratically organized religions,
are certainly not the only way to go about answering these questions, but through
the process of primary socialization within the family, religion becomes the mechanism
by which those answers are achieved most frequently for people; and the way
that religion maintain its relevance from one generation to the next.
Additionally,
because of its bureaucratic organization, religion has a connection with capitalism.
Max Weber (2002) identifies that religion (particularly Protestant Calvinism) cultivates
cultural and social norms that allow capitalism to eventually take root as an economic
system lasting even longer than the religious beliefs that created it. Thus, western
religions (particularly Christianity and Catholicism) that exist within a
Capitalist system often operate through a transactional relationship. Using the
example of Catholicism, as long as parishioners of a particular sect of
religion tithe their time money, energy and effort they are then rewarded with the
comfort and solace in a paradisiac afterlife representative of an individualized
monarch style kingdom. Thus, religion becomes a mechanism of social control by
which capitalism retains solvency.
In
this commercialized culture of capitalism, death is ignored to keep focus on
youthful economic productivity, until it can’t be anymore; and when it can’t be
ignored, it is commodified. Death, like work, is monetized through a variety of
products and services that are ultimately for the bereaved; the great irony
being for those that believe in a blissful sovereign afterlife often still
mourn for their individual loss of relationships. A cynical conclusion to this
being that the grief felt is an indication of a lack of belief in the proposed
afterlife. Whereas a more charitable, and far more pleasant interpretation, is
that the mourning is a function of the power that person had in shaping the
lives around them.
Looking at death in the
context of Kurosawa’s Ran, we see some of the same commodified cultural
elements described above. Heditori is ignored by most of his Sons, often
believed to be senile, talking to him and reprimanding him as a child, before attempting
patricide. After the first scene where Heditori gave up his position, his two
eldest sons embittered by their father’s cruel treatment of them when they were
children, thinly veil their contempt of him and eventually conspire against him
to commit seppuku. Unable to complete the ritual, and emotionally rattled by
the betrayal of his sons, Heditori has a mental breakdown, and is left to wander
the countryside without a second thought. As Heditori and as his few companions
cope with his emerging mental illness, and reap the ruthlessness of his rule,
he can be viewed as an allegory for elder care in the US, left adrift in a
system that does not care about them, who they were and the sanctity of their life.
CONCLUSION
Kurosawa’s Ran is
a masterful meditation of aging and death that is one of the greatest cinematic
feasts for the eyes that almost never was. It is clear that Kurosawa was
projecting a lot of himself into the character of Heditori and wondering whether
or not his lifetime of making films was worth it, and what his legacy will be.
If this series of essays on the Chambara
films of Akira Kurosawa has consistently shown anything, it is the genius
of Kurosawa as a filmmaker and the enormous value he has as a director. While Ran is not my favorite Kurosawa
film, (that is still held by Seven
Samurai) it shows that age and acquiring a disability does not diminish
one’s ability to create great art.
Recommendations
Finally, here at the end
of this series, I hope that readers also go back and check out Kurosawa’s other
films not involving Samurai. If you are interested in his other Shakespearean adaptations,
may I suggest The Bad Sleep Well (adaptation of Hamlet). If readers
liked the film Parasite
by Bong Joon Ho please watch Kurosawa’s High/Low. If readers
enjoyed this brief analysis of Weber and how its connected to Kurosawa, his
film Ikiru is a contemplative and morosely accurate portrayal of life
within a Weberian bureaucracy. Mostly, I just want people to be exposed to more
of Kurosawa’s work, as he is one of the greatest filmmakers who ever lived.
REFERENCES
Collins,
Patricia Hill 2000. Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge Consciousness and the
Politics of Empowerment New York: Routledge
Ebert,
Roger 2000. “Great Movies: Ran Review” Rodgerebert.com Retrieved on
6/5/2022 Retrived at: https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-ran-1985
Quadagno,
Jill 2002. Aging and the Life Course: An Introduction to Social Gerontology (2nd)
eds. New York: McGraw Hill
Weber,
Max 2002. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism and other Writings
New York: Penguin Publishing
