1 00:00:18,440 --> 00:00:21,720 One of the most breathtaking sites in all of cinema: 2 00:00:21,760 --> 00:00:26,160 the mass ranks of warriors charging up the flanks of Mount Fuji. 3 00:00:26,200 --> 00:00:29,560 Their brightly coloured banners flattering in the wind, 4 00:00:29,600 --> 00:00:32,800 armies subdivided into primary colours: 5 00:00:32,840 --> 00:00:35,800 red, blue and yellow. 6 00:00:35,840 --> 00:00:40,640 Their 16th century Japanese armour magnificent in every detail 7 00:00:40,680 --> 00:00:43,840 as they storm a once mighty castle. 8 00:00:56,400 --> 00:01:00,320 So, let's... let's talk about Ran and Akira Kurosawa. 9 00:01:00,360 --> 00:01:02,480 Well, what an amazing film. 10 00:01:02,520 --> 00:01:06,280 I saw it again the other day and I couldn't believe what I saw. 11 00:01:06,320 --> 00:01:09,360 I mean... when I met him at Cannes, 12 00:01:09,400 --> 00:01:12,920 I had an interview with him. He didn't do too many interviews. 13 00:01:12,960 --> 00:01:15,080 But I asked him about Ran, 14 00:01:15,120 --> 00:01:19,400 and he said, "Well, I'm a sentimentalist." And I said, "What?" 15 00:01:20,760 --> 00:01:24,760 When you look at Ran, it's hardly sentimental, 16 00:01:24,800 --> 00:01:28,039 but he said, "Well, to me... 17 00:01:28,080 --> 00:01:31,520 it's about the Gods, or God, 18 00:01:31,560 --> 00:01:35,280 being very upset with the human race 19 00:01:35,320 --> 00:01:39,160 because the human race is intent on destroying itself, 20 00:01:39,200 --> 00:01:43,560 and when you look at Ran, everybody is destroyed." 21 00:01:59,039 --> 00:02:02,560 A decade in the making and finally released in 1985 22 00:02:02,600 --> 00:02:07,440 when Kurosawa was an old man, Ran is a staggering achievement, 23 00:02:07,480 --> 00:02:11,960 at once a bleak report on a world forsaken by God, 24 00:02:12,000 --> 00:02:14,280 and an astonishing testament 25 00:02:14,320 --> 00:02:17,720 to what one extraordinary artist could do with the medium. 26 00:02:47,800 --> 00:02:50,280 (SPEAKING JAPANESE) 27 00:02:50,320 --> 00:02:52,600 INTERPRETER: I'm very pleased to think that... 28 00:02:52,640 --> 00:02:55,200 I'm understood in foreign countries. 29 00:02:55,240 --> 00:03:00,000 And... it's a nice thing to know that one country after another 30 00:03:00,040 --> 00:03:04,040 reaches some ability of understanding in what I'm trying to say. 31 00:03:04,080 --> 00:03:06,760 And I think film has a very important role 32 00:03:06,800 --> 00:03:09,360 in fostering this sort of understanding. 33 00:03:09,400 --> 00:03:12,440 One of the greatest directors cinema has ever known, 34 00:03:12,480 --> 00:03:17,360 Akira Kurosawa applied himself to dramas, comedies, and thrillers, 35 00:03:17,400 --> 00:03:20,440 but his reputation was founded on the samurai epics 36 00:03:20,480 --> 00:03:22,480 he made in the '50s and '60s. 37 00:03:22,520 --> 00:03:26,240 Legendary titles like Rashomon, Yojiimbo, 38 00:03:26,280 --> 00:03:29,600 Hidden Fortress, and Seven Samurai. 39 00:03:29,640 --> 00:03:32,960 Nicknamed the Emperor for his physical stature, 40 00:03:33,000 --> 00:03:36,960 his total command of the medium and his uncompromising nature, 41 00:03:37,000 --> 00:03:41,520 Akira had followed his beloved older brother, Heigo, into filmmaking. 42 00:03:41,560 --> 00:03:44,600 Heigo, a master narrator of silent film, 43 00:03:44,640 --> 00:03:48,000 encouraged his younger sibling to read foreign literature 44 00:03:48,040 --> 00:03:51,120 and watch foreign films and plays. 45 00:03:51,160 --> 00:03:54,880 And it was Heigo who had taken his brother to see the aftermath 46 00:03:54,920 --> 00:03:58,520 of the Great Kanto earthquake of 1923, 47 00:03:58,560 --> 00:04:02,480 forbidding him from turning away from the scattered corpses, 48 00:04:02,520 --> 00:04:05,560 a brutal image that would echo through his work, 49 00:04:05,600 --> 00:04:08,920 and never more so than in Ran. 50 00:04:22,840 --> 00:04:27,080 Akira Kurosawa is a phenomenally interesting Japanese director 51 00:04:27,120 --> 00:04:31,160 because in a way he encapsulates a particular spirit and time in Japan 52 00:04:31,200 --> 00:04:34,480 with his work, but as an artist, he moves his work beyond that. 53 00:04:34,520 --> 00:04:37,400 He was born the son of, basically, 54 00:04:37,440 --> 00:04:39,520 a man who had a long line of samurai, 55 00:04:39,560 --> 00:04:43,400 part of a samurai clan, but who was also quite modern in his thinking, 56 00:04:43,440 --> 00:04:46,280 and he wanted his children to watch Western films 57 00:04:46,320 --> 00:04:47,920 and engage in Western culture. 58 00:04:47,960 --> 00:04:51,159 Akira Kurosawa made films in many genres. 59 00:04:51,200 --> 00:04:53,680 He made comedies, he made gangster thrillers, 60 00:04:53,720 --> 00:04:56,240 he made social realist films, 61 00:04:56,280 --> 00:05:00,000 but the ones, of course, that we really remember him for 62 00:05:00,040 --> 00:05:01,840 are his samurai movies. 63 00:05:01,880 --> 00:05:05,640 The samurai movies - Throne of Blood, Rashomon, 64 00:05:05,680 --> 00:05:08,440 Sanjuro, Yojimbo, Hidden Fortress, 65 00:05:08,480 --> 00:05:12,120 and, of course, Seven Samurai - are canon. 66 00:05:12,160 --> 00:05:14,680 They are sort of a canon of samurai movies. 67 00:05:14,720 --> 00:05:18,520 And what they do is they establish a genre 68 00:05:18,560 --> 00:05:22,080 and they establish the kind of political 69 00:05:22,120 --> 00:05:24,880 and also social and... 70 00:05:24,920 --> 00:05:28,520 the characters of the samurai for all time. 71 00:05:28,560 --> 00:05:31,200 Unique amongst Japanese filmmakers, 72 00:05:31,240 --> 00:05:35,159 Kurosawa found inspiration in foreign literature and films. 73 00:05:35,200 --> 00:05:38,720 He was keenly influenced by the great Westerns of John Ford 74 00:05:38,760 --> 00:05:42,560 and the work of DW Griffith and Cecil B De Mille. 75 00:05:42,600 --> 00:05:45,880 He loved the morally complex novels of Dostoyevsky 76 00:05:45,920 --> 00:05:49,560 and the plays of Brecht, and he thrilled to the great scope 77 00:05:49,600 --> 00:05:52,080 and dimension offered by Shakespeare. 78 00:05:52,120 --> 00:05:54,200 He had transformed Macbeth 79 00:05:54,240 --> 00:05:57,600 into the elemental samurai epic Throne of Blood 80 00:05:57,640 --> 00:06:01,320 and reconfigured Hamlet as The Bad Sleep Well. 81 00:06:01,360 --> 00:06:04,320 At the peak of his career, Kurosawa's 15 glorious years, 82 00:06:04,360 --> 00:06:08,880 from 1950 to 1965, he made 12 films. 83 00:06:08,920 --> 00:06:12,280 From 1970 for the next 20 years, he only made four, 84 00:06:12,320 --> 00:06:15,920 and those films were very difficult for him to make. 85 00:06:15,960 --> 00:06:20,080 In 1975, he was backed by the Soviet Union for Dersu Uzala, 86 00:06:20,120 --> 00:06:23,200 a story of a Mongolian woodsman helping a Russian Explorer. 87 00:06:23,240 --> 00:06:27,360 Then he was helped by Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas, 88 00:06:27,400 --> 00:06:30,800 who had persuaded 20th Century Fox to back him for Kagemusha. 89 00:06:30,840 --> 00:06:34,080 In 1975, also, he began working on... 90 00:06:34,120 --> 00:06:36,800 what he thought was his great story. 91 00:06:36,840 --> 00:06:40,880 It was the story Ran, the film, which was going to end his... 92 00:06:40,920 --> 00:06:43,480 investigation of the samurai tradition. 93 00:06:46,159 --> 00:06:49,200 Often with his work alongside Toshiro Mifune, 94 00:06:49,240 --> 00:06:54,120 his amazing star actor who had this great burly physicality to him, 95 00:06:54,159 --> 00:06:58,200 they were lauded around the world. But times did move on, 96 00:06:58,240 --> 00:07:01,240 and the nickname for Kurosawa was the Emperor. 97 00:07:01,280 --> 00:07:04,160 He was sort of revered in some corners, 98 00:07:04,200 --> 00:07:07,240 but his films were increasingly being seen 99 00:07:07,280 --> 00:07:11,160 by the late 1960s, early 1970s as a bit old fashioned. 100 00:07:11,200 --> 00:07:13,200 Up to that point, up until 1970, 101 00:07:13,240 --> 00:07:15,240 he'd only made films in black and white, 102 00:07:15,280 --> 00:07:18,280 and it was becoming increasingly difficult for him 103 00:07:18,320 --> 00:07:20,520 to secure funding to make his films, 104 00:07:20,560 --> 00:07:23,600 which were often slightly more expensive 105 00:07:23,640 --> 00:07:27,400 than the Japanese film industry, and the Japanese studios wanted to pay for. 106 00:07:27,440 --> 00:07:31,960 By his mid-seventies, Kurosawa was forgotten man in Japan. 107 00:07:32,000 --> 00:07:36,720 His great partnership with star Toshiro Mifune was long since over. 108 00:07:36,760 --> 00:07:41,240 His films had passed out of fashion, much like the protagonist of Ran, 109 00:07:41,280 --> 00:07:44,800 Kurosawa had begun to wonder what his life amounted to. 110 00:08:21,240 --> 00:08:25,560 Ran is Akira Kurosawa's last great samurai masterpiece. 111 00:08:25,600 --> 00:08:30,560 Not only is it an incredible epic, amazingly visual movie, 112 00:08:30,600 --> 00:08:34,600 but is it also a summation of all of his work beforehand, 113 00:08:34,640 --> 00:08:36,640 as well as his own life. 114 00:08:36,679 --> 00:08:41,240 And at the same time, it reflects back on his earlier samurai films 115 00:08:41,280 --> 00:08:45,080 because it moves into a completely different kind of ethos. 116 00:08:45,120 --> 00:08:47,520 This is a film about an old man. 117 00:08:47,560 --> 00:08:49,920 This is not a film about a young samurai. 118 00:08:49,960 --> 00:08:52,160 This is a man about... who's been a warrior. 119 00:08:52,200 --> 00:08:55,960 He's been a conqueror. He is a warlord, 120 00:08:56,000 --> 00:09:01,360 and he's surrounded by huge numbers of samurai and armies, 121 00:09:01,400 --> 00:09:04,960 and he's now reflecting back on his achievements 122 00:09:05,000 --> 00:09:08,000 and finding them, in a way, 123 00:09:08,040 --> 00:09:10,240 giving him a sort of sense of guilt. 124 00:09:10,280 --> 00:09:14,840 So this is Kurosawa not only looking at his own work, 125 00:09:14,880 --> 00:09:17,440 but he's also looking, to a certain extent, 126 00:09:17,480 --> 00:09:19,720 at his own life and what he's achieved. 127 00:09:19,760 --> 00:09:22,600 So I gather that Kurosawa was having a hard time 128 00:09:22,640 --> 00:09:24,800 getting financing for his later films. 129 00:09:24,840 --> 00:09:28,200 Oh, he had a very hard time. It really made him miserable. 130 00:09:29,480 --> 00:09:32,800 He also felt the public was not on his side anymore. 131 00:09:32,840 --> 00:09:37,240 The young people who went to the cinema or watched television a lot, 132 00:09:37,280 --> 00:09:42,000 they were out of tune with these big medieval epics, 133 00:09:42,040 --> 00:09:44,720 which didn't relate to them. 134 00:09:44,760 --> 00:09:46,640 They wanted something different. 135 00:09:46,680 --> 00:09:49,200 As for the film producers, 136 00:09:49,240 --> 00:09:53,840 they didn't really want to spend vast sums of money 137 00:09:53,880 --> 00:09:57,880 on an old man who's making great big epics, 138 00:09:57,920 --> 00:10:01,840 which they were by no means certain that the public would like. 139 00:10:01,880 --> 00:10:05,080 So it was very difficult for him. 140 00:10:05,120 --> 00:10:07,920 He'd just done Dodes'ka-den, 141 00:10:07,960 --> 00:10:11,760 which was one of his... working class films 142 00:10:11,800 --> 00:10:14,080 about the working class people, 143 00:10:14,120 --> 00:10:17,120 the poverty-stricken people in Japan. 144 00:10:17,160 --> 00:10:19,880 The trouble was there weren't very many 145 00:10:19,920 --> 00:10:23,840 and again, the public didn't really like it. 146 00:10:23,880 --> 00:10:27,240 So, he then embarked on Ran, which was... 147 00:10:28,240 --> 00:10:30,880 ..well, I think it's a bit of himself as well.Yes. 148 00:10:30,920 --> 00:10:34,080 OK, it's Lear, of course it's Lear, 149 00:10:34,120 --> 00:10:36,760 but it's also Kurosawa, 150 00:10:36,800 --> 00:10:41,200 who had been rejected after a lifetime of work 151 00:10:41,240 --> 00:10:43,520 and worldwide praise... 152 00:10:45,000 --> 00:10:49,000 ..rejected by his own public. That cut him very deeply. 153 00:11:09,280 --> 00:11:13,880 The title Ran translates to Chaos or Turmoil or Revolt. 154 00:11:13,920 --> 00:11:17,800 The story famously follows the contours of Shakespeare's King Lear, 155 00:11:17,840 --> 00:11:20,280 as the ageing warlord, Hidetora, 156 00:11:20,320 --> 00:11:23,960 chooses to divide his kingdom amongst his three sons, 157 00:11:24,000 --> 00:11:27,280 a decision that will reap devastating consequences 158 00:11:27,320 --> 00:11:30,200 as his land is engulfed by war. 159 00:11:30,240 --> 00:11:32,440 It's extraordinary. 160 00:11:32,480 --> 00:11:36,280 It's a portrait of the world ablaze, isn't it?Yes. 161 00:11:36,320 --> 00:11:39,960 A portrait of the world that has destroyed itself... 162 00:11:40,800 --> 00:11:43,880 ..through this old man's hopes and fears. 163 00:11:43,920 --> 00:11:47,040 Extraordinary film. Every time I see it... 164 00:11:47,880 --> 00:11:52,240 ..I think, goodness, how can anybody go and watch this? 165 00:11:52,280 --> 00:11:57,280 Because, you know, people want cheerful films, adventures. 166 00:11:57,320 --> 00:12:01,320 Are they going to like Ran? They won't even understand it probably. 167 00:12:01,360 --> 00:12:04,280 But yes, it has a primal power... It has a primal power. 168 00:12:04,320 --> 00:12:06,960 ..you don't need the words, you know? Yes, it is. 169 00:12:07,000 --> 00:12:10,200 That's why I love the idea that he's adapting, on a loose level, 170 00:12:10,240 --> 00:12:12,960 he's adapting King Lear without a single line of Shakespeare. 171 00:12:13,000 --> 00:12:17,480 Yet it's still the play in a lot of ways.Yes. 172 00:12:18,520 --> 00:12:20,680 Well, he did a very good Macbeth, too, 173 00:12:20,720 --> 00:12:23,880 which was a totally different Shakespeare.Throne of Blood, yes. 174 00:12:23,920 --> 00:12:28,520 The setting is a Sengoku period of the 15th and 16th centuries, 175 00:12:28,560 --> 00:12:31,280 when Japan was riven by civil war. 176 00:12:31,320 --> 00:12:33,480 The feudal system had collapsed 177 00:12:33,520 --> 00:12:37,000 and samurai warlords fought for control of Japan. 178 00:12:37,040 --> 00:12:40,520 Ran is centred on one such warlord, Hidetora, 179 00:12:40,560 --> 00:12:43,440 who has committed his share of atrocities. 180 00:12:43,480 --> 00:12:47,040 Haunted by a dream he chooses to abdicate and divide 181 00:12:47,080 --> 00:12:51,840 his kingdom between his three sons, Taro, Jiro, and Saburo. 182 00:12:54,400 --> 00:12:58,640 So, Kurosawa was interested in telling a story 183 00:12:58,680 --> 00:13:02,600 about the rival feudal warlords 184 00:13:02,640 --> 00:13:04,680 of the 15th and 16th century, 185 00:13:04,720 --> 00:13:07,560 in the Sengoku period in Japan. 186 00:13:07,600 --> 00:13:10,160 It was a sort of dissent into chaos, 187 00:13:10,200 --> 00:13:15,160 a word which roughly could be translated as Ran, 188 00:13:15,200 --> 00:13:17,400 but he was interested because he first read 189 00:13:17,440 --> 00:13:19,360 a story of a real feudal warlord, 190 00:13:19,400 --> 00:13:24,080 who was famous for having three very good and loyal sons 191 00:13:24,120 --> 00:13:27,000 that he could pass and split up his kingdom between. 192 00:13:27,040 --> 00:13:29,120 But when he read the story, he thought... 193 00:13:29,160 --> 00:13:31,240 what if the sons weren't so good? 194 00:13:31,280 --> 00:13:33,400 They weren't in the fashion of the filial piety 195 00:13:33,440 --> 00:13:35,440 of traditional Japanese culture, 196 00:13:35,480 --> 00:13:38,560 but if they were extremely treacherous instead? 197 00:13:38,600 --> 00:13:41,560 And so that was actually the genesis for Ran, 198 00:13:41,600 --> 00:13:43,680 rather than what people often say, later on, 199 00:13:43,720 --> 00:13:45,760 was simply just an adaptation, 200 00:13:45,800 --> 00:13:48,480 for example, of Shakespeare's King Lear. 201 00:13:48,520 --> 00:13:52,280 But King Lear did come onto the scene slightly later on, 202 00:13:52,320 --> 00:13:55,760 as the film was being developed before it went into production. 203 00:13:55,800 --> 00:13:59,240 Kurosawa thought about King Lear and about how well it applied 204 00:13:59,280 --> 00:14:05,560 in terms of the themes of a stubborn ageing warlord 205 00:14:05,600 --> 00:14:08,240 who was foolishly banishing 206 00:14:08,280 --> 00:14:10,920 those closest to him if they offended his pride 207 00:14:10,960 --> 00:14:13,720 and how, eventually, this treachery would lead 208 00:14:13,760 --> 00:14:16,000 to nearly everyone's doom. 209 00:14:18,240 --> 00:14:21,280 You can see the influences of many Western artists 210 00:14:21,320 --> 00:14:23,560 in Kurosawa's films, 211 00:14:23,600 --> 00:14:28,120 particularly Ran: John Ford, DW Griffith, Cecil B De Mille. 212 00:14:28,160 --> 00:14:31,360 He loved that big scale material 213 00:14:31,400 --> 00:14:37,000 and the locations in which men were placed almost in miniature. 214 00:14:37,040 --> 00:14:42,560 I think that that gave rise to the whole idea of having a landscape, 215 00:14:42,600 --> 00:14:48,120 which was not just an idea, but something that people moved through. 216 00:14:49,080 --> 00:14:52,720 In spite of the fact of what they could actually achieve. 217 00:14:52,760 --> 00:14:56,520 Throne of Blood is clearly a Japanese version of Macbeth, 218 00:14:56,560 --> 00:15:01,080 an absolutely wonderful, sort of, translation of Shakespeare 219 00:15:01,120 --> 00:15:04,840 into Japanese samurai culture. Marvelous. 220 00:15:04,880 --> 00:15:08,840 The Bad Sleep Well is something even more extreme; 221 00:15:08,880 --> 00:15:12,800 that is the sort of Yakuza version of Hamlet. 222 00:15:13,600 --> 00:15:16,840 Both of them are very successful in their own way, although quite different. 223 00:15:16,880 --> 00:15:20,680 Kurosawa was inspired by two separate stories to create Ran. 224 00:15:20,720 --> 00:15:23,480 The first was the story of a Japanese nobleman 225 00:15:23,520 --> 00:15:28,040 who was explaining to his sons why the three sons needed to unite, 226 00:15:28,080 --> 00:15:30,960 and he explained it with this arrow. He broke a single arrow 227 00:15:31,000 --> 00:15:33,800 and then showed them that three arrows would be impossible to break. 228 00:15:33,840 --> 00:15:36,920 That was the initial inciting incident for Kurosawa. 229 00:15:36,960 --> 00:15:38,880 His other influence was King Leer. 230 00:15:38,920 --> 00:15:42,720 The story of a king at the end of his life with three daughters 231 00:15:42,760 --> 00:15:45,520 and two of those daughters are turning against him, 232 00:15:45,560 --> 00:15:48,360 disloyal, treacherous, and one loves him, 233 00:15:48,400 --> 00:15:51,760 but he can't see that and he pushes her away. 234 00:15:51,800 --> 00:15:55,040 So, Kurosawa blended these stories together: 235 00:15:55,080 --> 00:15:57,680 what would've happened if the nobleman's sons had behaved 236 00:15:57,720 --> 00:16:00,280 like the daughters of King Lear? 237 00:16:00,320 --> 00:16:02,720 That two sons fought against their father 238 00:16:02,760 --> 00:16:04,800 and one son who was expelled from the kingdom? 239 00:16:04,840 --> 00:16:07,680 And that's the basis of the story of Ran. 240 00:16:07,720 --> 00:16:10,360 Now, we can also see very powerful influences 241 00:16:10,400 --> 00:16:13,320 from King Lear in certain characters. 242 00:16:13,360 --> 00:16:15,920 This is a story of a traditional samurai lord, 243 00:16:15,960 --> 00:16:19,520 but there are elements to this which weren't accurate for the time. 244 00:16:19,560 --> 00:16:22,040 So for instance, no Japanese lord would have a jester 245 00:16:22,080 --> 00:16:24,960 or a fool, for them that was just not part of the Japanese tradition. 246 00:16:25,000 --> 00:16:28,120 The nearest thing would've been a page, but they wouldn't have had 247 00:16:28,160 --> 00:16:30,400 the role of clown or humorous character. 248 00:16:30,440 --> 00:16:33,280 So he was very much leaning towards 249 00:16:33,320 --> 00:16:36,440 Lear with sons by the time he started shooting 250 00:16:36,480 --> 00:16:38,680 and by the time he started writing the characters. 251 00:16:58,720 --> 00:17:02,520 The role of the fool from Lear is played by a singer-songwriter, 252 00:17:02,560 --> 00:17:05,720 known only as Peter, an angelic figure 253 00:17:05,760 --> 00:17:08,400 who refuses to leave his master's side. 254 00:17:08,440 --> 00:17:11,040 The character's androgynous qualities 255 00:17:11,079 --> 00:17:14,280 are seen as the sole antidote to the violence. 256 00:17:14,319 --> 00:17:17,200 And Kurosawa spoke about it afterwards. 257 00:17:17,240 --> 00:17:20,440 It was actually one of the first roles he cast, simply called Peter. 258 00:17:20,480 --> 00:17:23,240 He's quite androgynous 259 00:17:23,280 --> 00:17:26,079 and is supposed to be essentially there to entertain 260 00:17:26,119 --> 00:17:28,560 the sort of 'better born'. 261 00:17:28,600 --> 00:17:32,440 But he's able to say things that the others wouldn't get away with, 262 00:17:32,480 --> 00:17:34,840 because he's not bound by the same social codes 263 00:17:34,880 --> 00:17:37,760 and maybe no one takes him as seriously. 264 00:17:37,800 --> 00:17:39,960 If you notice, he doesn't wear a sword, 265 00:17:40,000 --> 00:17:42,080 so he's not a part of the samurai class, 266 00:17:42,120 --> 00:17:44,120 which means there's some leeway. 267 00:17:44,160 --> 00:17:48,760 And Kurosawa puts words in his mouth that I think stand very much 268 00:17:48,800 --> 00:17:52,800 in the latter part of the film for how Kurosawa feels about suffering 269 00:17:52,840 --> 00:17:55,720 and how man is drawn to suffering 270 00:17:55,760 --> 00:17:58,120 more than he is to joy or to peace. 271 00:18:46,680 --> 00:18:48,840 (HORSE NEIGHS) 272 00:18:54,760 --> 00:18:56,760 (HORSE NEIGHS, INDISTINCT COMMOTION) 273 00:19:13,000 --> 00:19:16,080 (LOUDER COMMOTION, HORSE NEIGHS) 274 00:19:17,120 --> 00:19:19,120 (HORSE NEIGHS) 275 00:19:34,000 --> 00:19:38,800 Ran takes a very bleak view of the world, in particular Japan's history. 276 00:19:38,840 --> 00:19:42,600 This is a film as much about the catastrophe of war 277 00:19:42,640 --> 00:19:45,720 as it is about Hidetora's, fragmenting psyche. 278 00:19:45,760 --> 00:19:49,240 Kurosawa's fame was founded on his use of black and white, 279 00:19:49,280 --> 00:19:53,120 but his late films, Kagemusha, and above all, Ran, 280 00:19:53,160 --> 00:19:55,160 made full fulsome use of colour. 281 00:19:55,960 --> 00:19:58,240 What is most startling is the contrast 282 00:19:58,280 --> 00:20:01,280 between the ashen mountain sides or stone walls 283 00:20:01,320 --> 00:20:03,960 and the brightly regaled armies. 284 00:20:04,000 --> 00:20:09,200 In a way, it's perfect for what he wanted to do. 285 00:20:09,240 --> 00:20:11,520 Depressing as it is, you know? 286 00:20:11,560 --> 00:20:16,320 I mean, the amount of people who die in the film is phenomenal, 287 00:20:16,360 --> 00:20:18,720 the traitorous nature of it 288 00:20:18,760 --> 00:20:21,360 and there's this poor old man who's lived. 289 00:20:21,400 --> 00:20:26,560 This Lear has been violent all his life, and been triumphant. 290 00:20:26,600 --> 00:20:30,760 Now he's going to pass it onto his sons, and what happens? 291 00:20:30,800 --> 00:20:33,440 They quarrel with each other. They quarrel with him. 292 00:20:33,480 --> 00:20:36,880 The whole thing goes up in smoke. What is he left with? 293 00:20:36,920 --> 00:20:40,760 A life which is worthless. Extraordinary. 294 00:20:40,800 --> 00:20:43,880 He has spent over 50 years at war. 295 00:20:43,920 --> 00:20:48,280 He says, "You know, I started my conquest at the age of 17. 296 00:20:48,320 --> 00:20:51,840 I'm now 53 and I'm getting tired." 297 00:20:51,880 --> 00:20:56,600 In order to retire, he decides to pass on responsibility 298 00:20:56,640 --> 00:20:59,160 of his territory to his three sons. 299 00:20:59,200 --> 00:21:03,400 His youngest son decides that that's not such a good idea, 300 00:21:03,440 --> 00:21:06,240 partly because he doesn't trust his two elder brothers 301 00:21:06,280 --> 00:21:11,480 and so he gets disenfranchised, he gets actually sent away. 302 00:21:11,520 --> 00:21:15,200 Hidetora will then take his retinue of 300 samurai warriors 303 00:21:15,240 --> 00:21:19,800 and basically stay at each of his son's castles in turn. 304 00:21:19,840 --> 00:21:21,280 This is his grand plan. 305 00:21:21,320 --> 00:21:26,360 Of course, it goes horribly wrong because the two sons that are left. 306 00:21:26,400 --> 00:21:29,400 in order to be able to control this, really don't want him. 307 00:21:29,440 --> 00:21:32,680 They want to sort of get rid of him and then control their own destinies. 308 00:21:32,720 --> 00:21:34,720 They don't want him hanging around as well. 309 00:21:57,200 --> 00:22:01,120 Within the fury, our eyes are drawn to a figure in a white robe 310 00:22:01,160 --> 00:22:03,480 staggering down the castle steps. 311 00:22:03,520 --> 00:22:06,240 An old man driven to madness 312 00:22:06,280 --> 00:22:09,480 by this vision of destruction he has wrought. 313 00:22:09,520 --> 00:22:13,320 Somehow, the arrows and flames never touch him. 314 00:22:30,080 --> 00:22:32,160 Ran was three years in production. 315 00:22:32,200 --> 00:22:34,480 The making of the costumes and the building of the sets 316 00:22:34,520 --> 00:22:36,960 was enormously laborious tasks, 317 00:22:37,000 --> 00:22:39,840 and then once everything was in place, it took a year to shoot. 318 00:22:39,880 --> 00:22:43,760 It was a vast epic in scale 319 00:22:43,800 --> 00:22:46,120 for a number of reasons. He was using real castles. 320 00:22:46,160 --> 00:22:48,800 He built an entire castle from nothing 321 00:22:48,840 --> 00:22:50,880 on the slopes of Mount Fuji, 322 00:22:50,920 --> 00:22:54,000 something which costs at the time $1.6 million. 323 00:22:54,040 --> 00:22:56,440 So in today's money, that would be an enormous sum. 324 00:22:56,480 --> 00:22:58,040 It was incredibly ambitious. 325 00:23:08,320 --> 00:23:12,080 I always remember the scene of the burning castle 326 00:23:12,120 --> 00:23:15,800 when the old man staggers out. Of course, they had to do it in one take 327 00:23:15,840 --> 00:23:17,920 because the castle was burning. 328 00:23:17,960 --> 00:23:20,240 What a lot of pressure on the actor that must have been! 329 00:23:20,280 --> 00:23:22,040 Of course, he's marvellous in it. Yes. 330 00:23:22,080 --> 00:23:24,720 The actors were really... 331 00:23:24,760 --> 00:23:27,400 had to be completely disciplined. 332 00:23:27,440 --> 00:23:29,480 Everything had to be right. 333 00:23:29,520 --> 00:23:32,960 The light, the weather, the costumes, 334 00:23:33,000 --> 00:23:34,920 everything had to be right. 335 00:23:34,960 --> 00:23:37,880 To have that number of horses in the film, 336 00:23:37,920 --> 00:23:40,640 they cost more than human beings, 337 00:23:40,680 --> 00:23:43,800 especially when you have to ship them over from America, 338 00:23:43,840 --> 00:23:47,080 and even the little bowls from which they eat 339 00:23:47,120 --> 00:23:50,400 are absolutely perfect for the period, 340 00:23:50,440 --> 00:23:53,920 and made specially at great cost. 341 00:23:53,960 --> 00:23:57,320 The costumes cost an enormous amount. 342 00:23:58,240 --> 00:24:01,480 So the film was terribly expensive to make, 343 00:24:01,520 --> 00:24:03,920 but what a film. 344 00:24:03,960 --> 00:24:06,840 So originally Toshiro Mifune was set to star 345 00:24:06,880 --> 00:24:09,120 in Ran as Hidetora, the warlord. 346 00:24:09,160 --> 00:24:12,480 But things changed between him and Kurosawa over the years, 347 00:24:12,520 --> 00:24:15,400 and instead Kurosawa turned to another actor 348 00:24:15,440 --> 00:24:17,080 who he had worked with in the past. 349 00:24:17,120 --> 00:24:19,680 That actor was Tatsuya Nakadai, 350 00:24:19,720 --> 00:24:23,400 who was 51 at the time of Ran, though made up to look much older, 351 00:24:23,440 --> 00:24:25,840 and he was already a big star, often associated 352 00:24:25,880 --> 00:24:28,240 to samurai films of that time. 353 00:24:28,280 --> 00:24:30,520 And he had been either a star or a co-star 354 00:24:30,560 --> 00:24:33,440 in several other Kurosawa films. 355 00:24:33,480 --> 00:24:37,600 So Nakadai had developed a good working relationship with Kurosawa 356 00:24:37,640 --> 00:24:41,280 in Kagemusha where he plays this kind of dual role of a thief 357 00:24:41,320 --> 00:24:44,000 pretending to be a feudal leader. 358 00:24:44,040 --> 00:24:47,560 And he was really right for this part 359 00:24:47,600 --> 00:24:50,080 in a way that maybe Mifune might not have been 360 00:24:50,120 --> 00:24:53,960 because of his burly physicality in his more action-orientated roles 361 00:24:54,000 --> 00:24:55,960 that he had played in the past for Kurosawa. 362 00:24:56,000 --> 00:24:58,840 But this was a different style and a different type of actor. 363 00:24:58,880 --> 00:25:00,720 Nakadai was stage trained. 364 00:25:00,760 --> 00:25:03,520 He had a slightly more intellectual energy, 365 00:25:03,560 --> 00:25:05,560 and he also had a comedic side to him, 366 00:25:05,600 --> 00:25:07,800 even if it wasn't overtly comedic. 367 00:25:07,840 --> 00:25:11,880 It suited the theatricality of what Kurosawa was doing with Ran 368 00:25:11,920 --> 00:25:15,280 because it wasn't strict realism that he was dealing in. 369 00:25:15,320 --> 00:25:17,480 It was something more heightened. 370 00:25:17,520 --> 00:25:21,320 Kurosawa turned to traditions in Japanese performance, 371 00:25:21,360 --> 00:25:24,360 like Noh theatre for a lot of the work in Ran. 372 00:25:24,400 --> 00:25:28,280 He had costume makers from Noh theatre work 373 00:25:28,320 --> 00:25:30,320 with the costume designs to create the costumes. 374 00:25:30,360 --> 00:25:32,600 They have a very traditional feel to them. 375 00:25:32,640 --> 00:25:35,560 He also had certain things that he took from the performance style, 376 00:25:35,600 --> 00:25:39,520 the makeup. So a lot of the makeup resembles characters 377 00:25:39,560 --> 00:25:43,080 from Noh and Kabuki theatre, and also certain ways 378 00:25:43,120 --> 00:25:46,440 of delivering gestures is from that performance style. 379 00:25:46,480 --> 00:25:50,280 So, if you like, he's paying tribute to the long tradition 380 00:25:50,320 --> 00:25:52,560 of Japanese performance art, as someone who 381 00:25:52,600 --> 00:25:55,680 the Japanese had sometimes derided for being too Western. 382 00:25:55,720 --> 00:25:59,480 This is him showing you what happens if you truly fuse 383 00:25:59,520 --> 00:26:03,120 the performance and the filmmaking styles of both cultures. 384 00:26:03,160 --> 00:26:07,200 This is very much... possibly the most beautiful 385 00:26:07,240 --> 00:26:09,840 fusion of the two in his career. 386 00:26:09,880 --> 00:26:13,800 So Nakadai was made up to look much older than he was at 51. 387 00:26:13,840 --> 00:26:16,880 It's easy to forget, he was a distinguished looking gentleman under there, 388 00:26:16,920 --> 00:26:20,040 but you have these thick eyebrows and this long grey hair, 389 00:26:20,080 --> 00:26:23,760 and of course this Kabuki-like white face makeup, 390 00:26:23,800 --> 00:26:27,160 which only becomes more self-evident 391 00:26:27,200 --> 00:26:30,960 and becomes sort of exaggerated as the film goes on, 392 00:26:31,000 --> 00:26:33,720 until by the final scenes, he's almost completely, 393 00:26:33,760 --> 00:26:36,000 sort of, whiteface tinged with grey. 394 00:26:36,040 --> 00:26:39,680 Sort of looks like he's stained by smoke and suffering 395 00:26:39,720 --> 00:26:42,360 and he looks like a ghost. 396 00:26:42,400 --> 00:26:47,800 So it has this incredible, almost grotesque effect as it goes on. 397 00:26:47,840 --> 00:26:51,280 Although we feel for him deeply, there is something... 398 00:26:51,320 --> 00:26:55,400 really striking about the use of makeup in this film. 399 00:26:55,440 --> 00:27:00,160 Another element in the film, which is Lady Kaede. 400 00:27:00,200 --> 00:27:03,720 Lady Kaede is a crucial figure in this story. 401 00:27:03,760 --> 00:27:08,320 She has been called The Lady Macbeth of this particular film, Ran, 402 00:27:08,360 --> 00:27:12,960 because she is the one who engages in a plot. 403 00:27:13,000 --> 00:27:17,800 What we don't know until sometime in the course of the story, 404 00:27:17,840 --> 00:27:23,360 is that this is a very, very intricate plot of revenge, 405 00:27:23,400 --> 00:27:28,120 not only to get rid of Hidetora, but also his entire family. 406 00:27:28,160 --> 00:27:33,120 Lady Kaede is this sort of Lady Macbeth-esque character, 407 00:27:33,160 --> 00:27:36,120 this viper-ish, manipulative seductress, 408 00:27:36,160 --> 00:27:38,200 the wife of the oldest son, 409 00:27:38,240 --> 00:27:43,400 and she basically manipulates and convinces her husband to usurp 410 00:27:43,440 --> 00:27:46,280 his father's kingdom and then eventually also seduces 411 00:27:46,320 --> 00:27:48,840 her brother-in-law in order to do her bidding. 412 00:27:48,880 --> 00:27:51,960 And although she is, sort of... 413 00:27:52,000 --> 00:27:55,160 an incarnation of a whirlwind of evil, 414 00:27:55,200 --> 00:27:57,840 in a sense, she also has her reasons. 415 00:27:57,880 --> 00:28:01,920 Her machinations are the things that drive the story along. 416 00:28:01,960 --> 00:28:05,880 We initially see her as a very ambitious figure. 417 00:28:05,920 --> 00:28:08,880 We think she's got her husband's best interests at heart. 418 00:28:08,920 --> 00:28:10,920 She wants him to become more powerful. 419 00:28:10,960 --> 00:28:14,440 Over the film, we gradually understand that in fact, 420 00:28:14,480 --> 00:28:18,040 the castle that they're living in, the First Castle, there are three castles, 421 00:28:18,080 --> 00:28:21,320 imaginatively known as First Castle, Second Castle, and Third Castle. 422 00:28:21,360 --> 00:28:24,560 The First Castle, the biggest and the most powerful, 423 00:28:24,600 --> 00:28:28,000 was hers and her families, and when it was taken by the overlord, 424 00:28:28,040 --> 00:28:32,480 her father and brother were killed, and her mother committed suicide and she was forced into marriage. 425 00:28:32,520 --> 00:28:35,240 So she does have motivations for what she's doing, 426 00:28:35,280 --> 00:28:38,440 but she is desperate to bring down this family 427 00:28:38,480 --> 00:28:42,880 and regain control of her castle, to regain her family's First Castle. 428 00:28:42,920 --> 00:28:47,080 So she's really manipulating all of the brothers in a way. 429 00:28:48,800 --> 00:28:51,920 The character is played by an actress 430 00:28:51,960 --> 00:28:54,720 who I don't think had worked with Kurosawa before. 431 00:28:54,760 --> 00:28:58,880 Mieko Harada, and she's really a force of nature in this film. 432 00:28:58,920 --> 00:29:01,440 Really quite frightening, and she also has 433 00:29:01,480 --> 00:29:05,760 this unusual cosmetic, sort of, kabuki-like look to her, 434 00:29:05,800 --> 00:29:09,320 which makes her sort of seem like this beautiful, 435 00:29:09,360 --> 00:29:14,120 terrifying doll in some scenes capable of great cruelty. 436 00:29:14,160 --> 00:29:16,400 Words fail me about Kurosawa, 437 00:29:16,440 --> 00:29:20,400 because he doesn't fit into any bracket, does he, really? 438 00:29:20,440 --> 00:29:22,920 No. Not with all his films. 439 00:29:22,960 --> 00:29:25,400 He's bit beyond bracketing, isn't he?He is. 440 00:29:25,440 --> 00:29:29,240 But I do like to think of him as the man who invented action cinema, 441 00:29:29,280 --> 00:29:32,280 whether he knew he was doing it or not, because the West... 442 00:29:32,320 --> 00:29:35,240 I think once we'd had the samurai films and right through to Ran, 443 00:29:35,280 --> 00:29:38,160 I think the Western filmmakers were saying, well, that's how you do it. 444 00:29:38,200 --> 00:29:41,880 That's how you move things in in front of a camera.Yes. 445 00:29:41,920 --> 00:29:47,080 And also must remember that he trained as a painter for some time. 446 00:29:47,120 --> 00:29:49,120 He wanted to be a painter. 447 00:29:49,920 --> 00:29:52,640 And it's very painterly, Ran, isn't it? 448 00:29:52,680 --> 00:29:56,240 You could stop it at any point and you'd have an... 449 00:29:56,280 --> 00:29:59,520 amazing painting, wouldn't you? One after the other. 450 00:29:59,560 --> 00:30:02,960 Yes. Phenomenal. He had phenomenal control 451 00:30:03,000 --> 00:30:07,160 of nearly every element of the filmmaking process, within one film. 452 00:30:07,200 --> 00:30:08,840 Absolutely. 453 00:30:33,800 --> 00:30:36,280 (SPEAKS JAPANESE) 454 00:31:52,840 --> 00:31:56,080 Ran only slowly gained its status as a classic. 455 00:31:56,120 --> 00:32:00,040 It did modestly well in Japan and much better in the West. 456 00:32:00,080 --> 00:32:03,160 Critics were united in their fulsome praise. 457 00:32:03,200 --> 00:32:07,520 On this scale, there was no one to match Kurosawa's barbaric lyricism. 458 00:32:08,400 --> 00:32:12,440 There were three more films to come, quieter, elegiac pieces 459 00:32:12,480 --> 00:32:15,560 such as Dreams and Rhapsody In August. 460 00:32:15,600 --> 00:32:17,880 But Ran stands as the capstone 461 00:32:17,920 --> 00:32:23,000 on an astonishing unrepeatable tradition of the Kurosawa Epic. 462 00:32:23,040 --> 00:32:26,360 But the fact that he was so disappointed 463 00:32:26,400 --> 00:32:29,200 with the Japanese audiences, 464 00:32:29,240 --> 00:32:35,120 and the fact that he was, oh, 75 or more when he made the film, 465 00:32:35,160 --> 00:32:37,760 it's astonishing that he could make such a huge, 466 00:32:37,800 --> 00:32:41,680 brilliantly coloured, amazing looking film 467 00:32:41,720 --> 00:32:46,280 at that age, knowing full well, that it probably wouldn't be received 468 00:32:46,320 --> 00:32:49,720 very well by the young people in Japan. 469 00:32:49,760 --> 00:32:53,640 He's a Japanese director. He wanted to appeal to his people. 470 00:32:53,680 --> 00:32:56,960 He knew the traditions of his people. 471 00:32:58,440 --> 00:33:03,000 He knew about the samurai. He really did. 472 00:33:03,040 --> 00:33:05,520 He delved into the history 473 00:33:05,560 --> 00:33:09,280 and yet... young people didn't... 474 00:33:09,320 --> 00:33:12,360 give a damn about him at one point, 475 00:33:12,400 --> 00:33:16,520 but now these films are being revived in Japan. 476 00:33:16,560 --> 00:33:19,200 They always get full houses, apparently. 477 00:33:19,240 --> 00:33:22,960 Ran took over a year to shoot as the director marshalled scenes 478 00:33:23,000 --> 00:33:26,720 with over 1400 extras and 200 horses. 479 00:33:26,760 --> 00:33:31,000 The backdrop had to match the apocalyptic nature of the drama, 480 00:33:31,040 --> 00:33:34,400 as well as the grassy planes of the southern island Kyushu. 481 00:33:34,440 --> 00:33:37,000 He filmed on the slopes of Mount Aso, 482 00:33:37,040 --> 00:33:39,720 Japan's largest active volcano, 483 00:33:39,760 --> 00:33:43,040 utilising the stunning 15th century castles 484 00:33:43,080 --> 00:33:46,320 that still stood sentinel on the planes. 485 00:33:46,360 --> 00:33:50,760 Kurosawa marshalled the enormous army of extras that he'd hired, 486 00:33:50,800 --> 00:33:53,800 including local villagers who had no acting training, 487 00:33:53,840 --> 00:33:57,200 by insisting that everyone remain in role, 488 00:33:57,240 --> 00:34:00,000 essentially, behave like soldiers all of the time. 489 00:34:00,040 --> 00:34:04,440 So everyone was dressed in armour and thought of themselves as soldiers throughout the shoot, 490 00:34:04,480 --> 00:34:07,800 during the battle sequences, and during the period they were on set. 491 00:34:07,840 --> 00:34:12,000 And as a result, everything was disciplined as if it was an actual army. 492 00:34:12,040 --> 00:34:14,440 He turned to Ishiro Honda, 493 00:34:14,480 --> 00:34:18,440 a colleague from his earlier days who'd been a soldier for eight years 494 00:34:18,480 --> 00:34:20,960 to marshal the armies in the second battle sequence. 495 00:34:21,000 --> 00:34:23,920 There are two big battle sequences in this film. 496 00:34:23,960 --> 00:34:26,040 The first is in Third Castle, 497 00:34:26,080 --> 00:34:30,280 where the end of our warlord's ambitions become apparent to him. 498 00:34:30,320 --> 00:34:33,080 His retinue is entirely lost, and he is reduced 499 00:34:33,120 --> 00:34:35,719 to just one man alone in the wilderness. 500 00:34:35,760 --> 00:34:38,280 Then at the end, his younger son comes to his aid, 501 00:34:38,320 --> 00:34:40,360 comes to try to find him and bring him home. 502 00:34:40,400 --> 00:34:42,320 Of the two older brothers, one is dead, 503 00:34:42,360 --> 00:34:46,199 so the other is in charge of their combined military forces. 504 00:34:46,239 --> 00:34:48,719 There are two armies facing off against each other, 505 00:34:48,760 --> 00:34:50,840 the youngest and the older brother, 506 00:34:50,880 --> 00:34:54,920 and then the youngest brother's father-in-law turns up 507 00:34:54,960 --> 00:34:57,600 with his own army on one hill and a neighbouring warlord 508 00:34:57,640 --> 00:35:00,360 turns up with his army on another hill. So there are four armies 509 00:35:00,400 --> 00:35:03,480 on this battlefield that have to be arranged and marshalled, 510 00:35:03,520 --> 00:35:05,960 and Honda has to oversee this with his military training 511 00:35:06,000 --> 00:35:11,200 because this is beyond the intimate battle of the Third Castle. 512 00:35:11,240 --> 00:35:14,840 This is something where you are actually fielding for full armies. 513 00:35:14,880 --> 00:35:17,840 There are horses, there are guns, 514 00:35:17,880 --> 00:35:21,360 there are soldiers who have to be precisely maneuvered around. 515 00:35:21,400 --> 00:35:25,360 And so that's where he turned for help, a real soldier, if you like. 516 00:35:25,400 --> 00:35:28,880 I was fortunate enough to talk to Akira Kurosawa 517 00:35:28,920 --> 00:35:31,360 after seeing Ran at a film festival, 518 00:35:31,400 --> 00:35:34,240 and... he showed me 519 00:35:34,280 --> 00:35:37,360 several, actually several pieces of the artwork 520 00:35:37,400 --> 00:35:41,040 that he'd done for it about, maybe, 20 actually, he'd brought with him. 521 00:35:41,080 --> 00:35:44,720 And I have to say, they were breathtakingly beautiful. 522 00:35:44,760 --> 00:35:46,960 I mean, very, very detailed. 523 00:35:47,000 --> 00:35:49,640 This was a man who not had been a painter, 524 00:35:49,680 --> 00:35:52,760 but he actually had a complete visual idea 525 00:35:52,800 --> 00:35:54,800 of how the film would look. 526 00:35:54,840 --> 00:35:57,600 I looked at a few of them 527 00:35:57,640 --> 00:36:00,280 and I realised that what I was looking at was the film. 528 00:36:00,320 --> 00:36:04,440 I was looking at a frame of the film, so they were almost identical 529 00:36:04,480 --> 00:36:06,840 to my memory of the film, which I'd only just seen. 530 00:36:06,880 --> 00:36:12,120 So to actually go from that to the film meant that... 531 00:36:12,160 --> 00:36:16,000 Kurosawa was wholly in command 532 00:36:16,040 --> 00:36:21,160 of his own mental image of what he wanted to see on the screen. 533 00:36:21,200 --> 00:36:23,480 With Ran, you have... 534 00:36:23,520 --> 00:36:28,480 a director who has taken all the combined decades of experience 535 00:36:28,520 --> 00:36:31,600 of all the great films that he had made prior 536 00:36:31,640 --> 00:36:34,520 into a late career masterpiece, 537 00:36:34,560 --> 00:36:38,600 and I think there's this great telling thing about Kurosawa, 538 00:36:38,640 --> 00:36:41,200 who I think could be quite a self-lacerating character. 539 00:36:41,240 --> 00:36:44,040 When he received, in 1990, the Academy Award 540 00:36:44,080 --> 00:36:46,080 for Lifetime Achievement as a director, 541 00:36:46,120 --> 00:36:49,640 he said that he was still learning about cinema and he didn't feel he deserved it, 542 00:36:49,680 --> 00:36:51,680 he was still learning everything about cinema, 543 00:36:51,720 --> 00:36:53,720 and he was in his 80s at that point, 544 00:36:53,760 --> 00:36:57,840 which I think is such a generous and modest response 545 00:36:57,880 --> 00:36:59,680 for a filmmaker of his calibre. 546 00:36:59,720 --> 00:37:02,160 But with Ran, there was something really great, 547 00:37:02,200 --> 00:37:05,320 which is that people used to ask him what his favourite 548 00:37:05,360 --> 00:37:08,200 or his best film was in his career 549 00:37:08,240 --> 00:37:12,240 and he always used to say his stock answer was 'my next film.' 550 00:37:12,280 --> 00:37:15,040 But after Ran in 1985, 551 00:37:15,080 --> 00:37:17,960 people would ask and he would say, it's Ran. 552 00:37:18,000 --> 00:37:22,880 It is a hugely influential film, and was from the moment it was released. 553 00:37:22,920 --> 00:37:26,640 From the day that it was out, really, people started to steal from it. 554 00:37:26,680 --> 00:37:30,080 So there was the film Excalibur, which was made very shortly afterwards, 555 00:37:30,120 --> 00:37:33,760 which copies the battle sequences very, very closely. 556 00:37:33,800 --> 00:37:36,240 The films go on all the way through 557 00:37:36,280 --> 00:37:38,720 to Game of Thrones recently, 558 00:37:38,760 --> 00:37:41,840 copies the battle sequences from Ran. It's sampled again 559 00:37:41,880 --> 00:37:44,000 and again and again from the moment it's released. 560 00:37:44,040 --> 00:37:48,240 So, he's the poet who's honoured in other lands, in a sense, 561 00:37:48,280 --> 00:37:51,840 and it's seen as such a masterpiece outside Japan, 562 00:37:51,880 --> 00:37:54,520 and in Japan now it is recognised, but at the time, 563 00:37:54,560 --> 00:37:58,720 it perhaps... he wasn't given the welcome home he was expecting. 564 00:37:59,520 --> 00:38:02,600 It's a film that works on so many levels. 565 00:38:02,640 --> 00:38:07,360 It's not just about a man who is... beyond redemption. 566 00:38:07,400 --> 00:38:10,800 The thing about Hidetora is that 567 00:38:10,840 --> 00:38:13,480 the guilt that he is now feeling... 568 00:38:13,520 --> 00:38:17,440 gives him a sense that he has to somehow find peace. 569 00:38:17,480 --> 00:38:20,320 He has to find atonement, and he cannot find it 570 00:38:20,360 --> 00:38:23,520 because he's gone too far down the line. 571 00:38:23,560 --> 00:38:27,440 This is Kurosawa at his most fatalistic. 572 00:38:27,480 --> 00:38:30,280 This is a very, very bleak philosophy, 573 00:38:30,320 --> 00:38:34,760 that there is no sense that Hidetora... 574 00:38:34,800 --> 00:38:38,800 will actually find redemption, even though there are one or two characters 575 00:38:38,840 --> 00:38:41,080 and one or two moments in the film 576 00:38:41,120 --> 00:38:44,720 where there is a spark of hope, there was a little spark of hope. 577 00:38:44,760 --> 00:38:46,880 You think he will, or at least 578 00:38:46,920 --> 00:38:49,560 there will be somebody who will come up to save him. 579 00:38:49,600 --> 00:38:52,280 He said he was a sentimentalist, 580 00:38:52,320 --> 00:38:56,680 but I think he was deeply humanistic, wasn't he really?Yeah. 581 00:38:57,920 --> 00:39:00,200 In everything he did... 582 00:39:00,240 --> 00:39:02,920 he felt very strongly about... 583 00:39:02,960 --> 00:39:05,440 how the world was going and... 584 00:39:05,480 --> 00:39:07,880 Always... 585 00:39:07,920 --> 00:39:10,440 with one individual at the centre, 586 00:39:10,480 --> 00:39:15,720 like the old boy in Ran, who ruined his life, wrecked his life. 587 00:39:16,560 --> 00:39:21,120 Somehow... every decision he takes is wrong, 588 00:39:22,360 --> 00:39:25,560 ..and it's done with the best motives at first. 589 00:39:26,520 --> 00:39:30,800 An extraordinary film, from an extraordinary director. 590 00:39:30,840 --> 00:39:35,280 We won't see it like again, that's for sure.Yeah, true. 591 00:39:48,800 --> 00:39:50,840 (HORSE NEIGHS) 592 00:39:55,120 --> 00:39:57,440 (HORSE NEIGHS) 593 00:40:05,360 --> 00:40:07,360 (HORSE NEIGHS) 594 00:40:09,840 --> 00:40:13,520 AccessibleCustomerService@sky.uk