Ran (1985)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Ran (1985) -- A. Kurosawa

Kurosawa takes on King Lear (changing the three daughters to three samurai sons) and has Tatsuya Nakadai slowly go mad with crazy white hair and beard while his fool (Peter) speaks and sings the truth (i.e. he screwed up) as the audience's surrogate.  I saw this (my second time) on a really huge screen in 1991 in Surabaya, Indonesia, in Japanese with Bahasa Indonesian subtitles, and the majestic images of blue, yellow, and red armies with banners waving in the wind have never left me.  Now watching it on blu-ray (but with only a 32" screen), setpieces, such as the brutal battle which leaves the castle in flames, are still pretty amazing.  True, its epic length could be a bit wearying and the plot operates well on a grand scale and not so sensitively on a smaller interpersonal scale.  But these are quibbles and this is a fine elegiac last triumph for AK.