First and foremost: a quick follow-up to Monday’s blog wherein I talked at length about networks’ fall television show renewals/cancellations. Looks like “My Name Is Earl” is indeed canceled, along with”Medium”, “Surviving Suburbia”, “Without a Trace”, “Kath & Kim”, “Samantha Who?”, “Terminator Sarah Connor Chronicles”, and “Dirty Sexy Money”. “Chuck” has been officially renewed, along with “Heroes” (a rather difficult feat considering it’s already been canceled twice), “Lie to Me”, “Southland”, and the final season of “According to Jim”. I’ll post a complete list once all the networks decide on the remaining wild cards like “The Unit”, “Ghost Whisperer”, “Criminal Minds”, “NCIS” and a few others. Man, thinking about it, that Hulu is looking better and better every day.
Finally.
Last night I had the pleasure of finally being able to watch Akira Kurosawa’s 1985 epic “Ran”, making it the sixth film I’ve seen of his (alongside Rashamon, Seven Samurai, Yojimbo and a couple others). The tragic thing about the review I’m about to write is that I have neither read nor seen any version of Shakespeare’s “King Lear”, on which this film is loosely based. Now, if Kurosawa would’ve gotten his head in the game and simply adapted “Romeo & Juliet” or “Antony & Cleopatra” then I would’ve been all set, but I guess he had to go and pay tribute to one of the other many Shakespearean works I’ve yet to enjoy. Yeah, guy can be a real son of a bitch.
Actually, I guess Kurosawa wrote the original screenplay for “Ran” before reading “King Lear” and was only marginally influenced after the initial planning stages for the film had already started in the late 70’s, but he also based the story largely on an old Japanese parable about the same thing anyway, so either way I have an excuse not to delve too deeply into the story here. Essentially it’s about an aging Japanese warlord who hands over his kingdom to one of his three sons, banishing another of his sons, and quickly realizing that a lifetime of being a warlord has probably not set the best example for anyone in his family. Utter chaos ensues, and the heady themes of power, greed, loyalty, family honor, atonement, and ultimate nihilism are all addressed throughout the parable, and while it’s easy to see a lesson of “greed leads to destruction” as being, if nothing else, predictable, it’s handled in a way such as that even this simple lesson is a bit clouded and ambiguous due to Kurosawa’s harsh and unforgiving portrait of humanity. War breeds war, people choose strife over peace, and a constant theme of “nothing can save us from ourselves” reminds us that Kurosawa set out to make a tragedy, and by God he succeeded.
Much like in “Rashamon”, Kurosawa relies on his trademark long shots of nature interacting with structure, but has the added bonus of being in vibrant color; a feature which isn’t to be taken for granted. Just off the top of my head I can think of a dozen or so shots that can be considered pure art, their beauty in stark contrast to the bleak narrative being told over them. Often we’ll see shots run deliberately long, giving time for the beauty of the shot itself to saturate the screen before moving on to the next. Kurosawa films outstanding transitions for scenes using only shots of the sky and clouds which uniquely serves to set the mood for upcoming scenes. Another brilliant aspect of the film is the way in which he utilizes the soundtrack, often dropping it out completely until scenes of intense action, in which the music overrides the natural sounds of battle, but never lets you become too comfortable with either the sound or silence, something which greatly adds to the tense atmosphere of the film itself.
At the time of its release, it was the most expensive Japanese film production to date, and the payoff is that this epic becomes fully realized with huge battle scenes, on-location filming in enormous castles, and very elaborate set and costume design. I suppose that everything was just in allignment for Kurosawa to get this masterpiece made, and the result is as beautiful as anything else he’s ever done.
Unrelated: Tarantino’s “Inglorious Basterds” just debuted at Cannes, with many early reviews calling it his best work since Pulp Fiction. It’s a bit of an odd thing to say, I guess, considering that Tarantino only does five-star movies, so I think what they mean to say is that (as expected) he didn’t just suddenly make a less than awesome movie. Who woulda thought?
Fuck yeah.
See you guys Friday with box office predictions (though, since Terminator IV is opening tomorrow I should do it tomorrow. That is not going to happen).
The Glass City 