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乱 [Ran]

Film Synopsis

The aged lord Hidetora (Tatsuya Nakadai) hands power to his eldest son, at the same time banishing the youngest, the only one to speak honestly to him. Betrayal is piled on betrayal as the eldest sons turn against the old man, relentlessly spurred on by Kaede (Mieko Harada), malevolent, viperish wife of the new ruler.
Moments of poetic delicacy – the youngest son cutting boughs of blossoms to make an arbour to shade his father as he dozes under a soundtrack of glorious birdsong – give way to sequences of battle so intense and violent that they beggar the imagination. The first battle – one of the most impressive in Kurosawa’s entire oeuvre – opens after Hidetora says the words “We are in hell” at the one-hour mark. All direct sound drops out and Tôru Takemitsu’s Mahler-inflected score takes over, rising and falling over exquisitely edited images of repeated arrow-showers, hundreds of soldiers with colour-coded uniforms and banners rushing headlong back and forth, corpses by the dozen, blood everywhere, the murder of six concubines by gunfire, and finally the burning of the castle to the ground, with the old lord slowly going catatonic amidst all the mayhem. It is a staggering six minutes of cinema, reminiscent of Bruegel’s great painting The Suicide Of Saul, whose titular event occurs off-centre, almost unacknowledged, as giant armies of ant-like soldiers swarm over the rest of the painting.

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/mar/28/akira-kurosawa-king-lear-story-ran-4k-restoration

Video

Film Details

Alternate Titles: Ran

Language: Japanese

Original Production Country: Japan

Original Release Year: 1985

Original Distribution Company: 
Toho (Japan)

Production Company: Herald Ace / Nippon Herald Films / Greenwich Film Productions

Executive Producer:

Producer: Serge Silberman & Masato Hara

Director: Akira Kurosawa

Writer: Akira Kurosawa, Hideo Oguni & Masato Ide

Cinematography: Takao Saito, Masaharu Ueda & Asakazu Nakai

Editor: Akira Kurosawa

Sound Editor:

Music/Score: Toru Takemitsu

Narrator:

Other Credits: Cast: Tatsuya Nakadai , Akira Terao, Jinpachi Nezu, Daisuke Ryu, Mieko Harada, Peter (Shinnosuke Ikehata), Hisashi Igawa & Yoshiko Miyazaki

Aspect Ratio:

Colour System: Colour

Colour Process: 

Duration: 162 mins

Restoration Details

Status: Released

Country Where Restored: 

Restoration Release Date: 17 March 2016

Country Restoration First Screened: United States

Lab Image Restored By:

Lab Audio Restored By: 

Restoration Sponsors:

Archive Partner In Restoration: 

Restoration Funded By: 

Restoration Premiere: AFA; Memory Festival, 17 March 2016

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About

Since 2012, Restoration Asia has been a showcase for the work of archives, technical service providers and distributors in their efforts to preserve the audio-visual heritage of Asia.

Restoration Asia is coordinated by OWL Studio, and is designed for archivists, scholars, students and professionals as well as those with a shared passion for the preservation and restoration of Asian Cinema & Asia’s cinematographic history.

レストレーションアジアは、アジア内外のアーカイブ、技術サービスプロバイダー、そして配給業者の仕事を紹介すると共に、アジアの映像遺産を保存する取り組みに焦点を当てます。

この継続的な技術シンポジウムは、アーキビスト、学者、学生、そしてプロフェッショナルのためにデザインされました。アジア映画とアジアの映画史の保存と復元のための情熱を共有するシンポジウムです。

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