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下津井と田ノ浦 Shimotsui, Okayama Canon AE-1 + NFD50mm F1.4, FUJI 業務100

下津井と田ノ浦シリーズ

Rashomon

Akira Kurosawa’s RAN (‘85) by Greg Ferrara

RAN begins with this image:

It ends with a shot drained of color and a family drained of life. How we get from one to the other is the story of RAN, inspired in part by both Shakespeare’s King Lear and the life of Mōri Motonari.

A king must divide up his kingdom among his sons, and life changes for everyone:

RAN is brilliant for many reasons but mostly for how strongly it relies on imagery to tell the story. The actors move in big strides and make gestures and mannerisms reminiscent of the storytelling methods used in silent film. Tatsuya Nakadai’s face alone, in heavy makeup, emerging from smoke filled ruins, tells a thousand stories all by itself.

RAN takes place in natural settings but its bold colors and grand gestures play against naturalism at every turn. It becomes a living picture book, as if telling the story in realistic terms would be too small, too passionless. And human passion rules the film:

And war, deceit and bloodshed:

One Wonderful Sunday | Akira Kurosawa | 1947