“Spectacular … Among the most thrilling movie experiences a viewer can have.”

Terrence Rafferty, The New York Times

The magisterial Ran, the great masterpiece of Kurosawa’s late period, is both an enthralling piece of epic moviemaking and an inspired reworking of King Lear. The film transposes Shakespeare’s play to 16th-century Japan, and transforms its three daughters into sons. Kurosawa and Kobayashi regular Nakadai Tatsuya is aging warlord Hidetora, the film’s Lear. When he abdicates in favour of his eldest son, it precipitates a fratricidal struggle of cataclysmic proportions. Ran is a visually overwhelming work, with exquisite costuming and sets, and dazzling (and horrifying) battle sequences—some rendered in silence but for Takemitsu Toru’s haunting score—unfolding over vast landscapes and in extraordinary colour. The title translates from the Japanese as ​“war” or ​“conflict,” but Kurosawa emphasizes an older, Chinese meaning of the word: ​“chaos.” Winner of one Oscar (Costume Design) and nominated for three more (Director, Cinematography, and Art Direction), Kurosawa’s final statement on the jidaigeki picture returns for this special 40th anniversary engagement.

In Japanese with English subtitles

“The results are all that one could possibly dream of … A Lear for our age, and for all time.”

Chris Peachment, Time Out

“One of cinema’s great epics … A stunning meditation on mankind’s capacity for relentless destruction made by a 75-year old director who had come to feel profoundly troubled by the world around him.”

Oscar Rickett, Little White Lies
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