RECOMMENDED FILM #1
RAN by AKIRA KUROSAWA
Partly taking inspiration from William Shakespeare’s famous tragedy King Lear and the Japanese Noh theatre, the legendary director Akira Kurosawa crafts an epic tale of greed, lust, ambition, and the corruption of human morality in his 1985 masterpiece RAN.
Taking place in the Sengoku era of Feudal Japan, also known as the Warring States Period, it tells the story of aging daimyo Hidetora Ichimonji who decides to split his kingdom between his three sons: Taro, Jiro and Saburo.
To watch a trailer of it, click here
After you watch it,
To read my review of it, click here
Still from Ran (1985), dir. Akira Kurosawa.
Who
is Ran and Ikiru’s director Akira Kurosawa?
Born in March 1910, the great Japanese director Akira Kurosawa shaped the language of cinema with films like Seven Samurai, Ikiru, Rashomon, Ran and left his mark on filmmakers across the world from Martin Scorsese and George Lucas to F.F. Coppola, Ingmar Bergman, and Andrei Tarkovsky. In his films, nature is never a backdrop but a soul that breathes through every frame. Every blow of wind, every drop of rain, every cut of the katana carries meaning. Kurosawa doesn’t tell his stories with resplendent words, but through the combination of the right motion and the right emotion, where image and feeling merge into something cinematic.
