Akira Kurosawa
Ran

"Ran", namely chaos. Akira Kurosawa (Tokyo, 1910) in 1970, at 60 years old, after a series of cinematic failures, attempts suicide. It is the key episode of a life always lived on the edge, between political grievances (he is forced to leave his work master, Kajiro Yamamoto, in 1936 due to ideological differences), extraordinary successes, monumental failures, a fierce love-hate relationship with the Western audience.

The suicide does not come to fruition. Fortunately. Because Kurosawa, before flying to Heaven (it happens in 1998), still gives us two great films. In 1974 "Dersu Uzala" and in 1985 "Ran", which many consider his greatest film, even superior to "Rashomon" and "The Seven Samurai".

Indeed, "Ran" is a masterpiece, and it wouldn't be daring to consider it the greatest film of the eighties, with all due respect to Bergman and Kubrick. The beginning itself is goosebump-inducing: four Japanese riders immobile at the highest point of a hill. Around them, other hills and an annoying wind. In the background, sweetly, the music of Toru Takemitsu. Then, like lightning, a boar appears. The hunt can begin, and with it the opening credits. There is already all of "Ran" in just over two minutes. Calm and chaos.

A marvelous film primarily because it is brimming with great images (to reiterate, once again, that image, more than plot, is the true essence of a film), a phenomenal mix of great moments of quiet (with shots of a Japan never so beautiful), and the eternal battle scenes, true directorial masterpieces, with the camera always perfectly placed at the center of the action, never invading the "privacy" of the battle. And so, the images become epic. Historical epic and cinematic epic. Kurosawa quotes and reinvents Eisenstein taking as a model the great lesson of cinema as a technical experiment, as style even before storytelling.

Then, as usual with Kurosawa, there is always a background of high stature, with the inevitable William Shakespeare in the foreground. Indeed, one could say that "Ran" is nothing more than an Eastern free adaptation of the famous "King Lear" by the Bard. Without forgetting Japanese culture (evident in the acting of the entire cast, close to the more canonical No theater), Greek tragedy and Homer, and scattered tributes, difficult to identify if one is not knowledgeable, to various painters of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (on this point, I refer to Aldo Tassone’s beautiful book, very simply entitled "Akira Kurosawa", published in 1994 for the literary-cinematic series "Il Castoro").

Despite its considerable length (about two hours and forty minutes) it remains one of those films essential for anyone wanting to approach great cinema, that cinema capable of moving through image (primarily) and, secondarily, through words. Worth noting, with full merit, the cinematographers, Takao Sahito and Masaharu Ueda, ingenious in representing the moods of the protagonists (and the progression of the story) through colors, often very bright and vivid, among the most beautiful seen on film.

A long and personal film, the most shining apex of a career always consistent with its own principles and theories on cinema, without ever giving in to compromises or being swallowed by the star system, whatever that may be. At certain moments, watching it closely, one almost gets the clear sensation that "Ran", more than a film, is a splendid dream projected onto celluloid. And perhaps the truth is not too far off.