Blow Winds, and Crack Your Cheeks!

Isabel and I just watched Akira Kurosawa's Ran. You might know Akira Kurosawa as that Japanese director that George Lucas was always ripping off...er...paying homage to, although you probably are more likely to know him as that guy they mention in the Bare Naked Ladies song that prompts the singer to talk about samurai.
Ran is, if you haven't clicked the hyperlink above, Kurosawa's fairly lose adaptation of King Lear, retold as a samurai epic. We have the Criterion Collection version, so I'll probably start watching the educational commentaries and learn all kinds of smart things to pass along to my students.
In the meantime, you get my gut reactions to the film.
I can certainly understand why this film gets the praise it does. Visually, he has some totally amazing shots...and I suspect they are even more amazing if put in context of film history. There are some amazing scenes of figures on distant cliffs or hilltops that must have been a bear to shoot, and there are some massive battle sequences that must have been logistically staggering in an age where you couldn't just generate a vast army using three guys in uniforms and Adobe Photoshop.

There were two things that hurt the experience of this film for me, though. The first was probably preconceived notions about King Lear. Because I knew ahead of time that the movie was adapted from Shakespeare, I couldn't help but compare the two. This meant I was constantly distracted when characterizations were not Shakespearean. This isn't really a fault of the movie. After all, when people when to see Shakespeare's King Lear, they were probably annoyed by how much he deviated from the chronicles as well. This distraction would probably go away on multiple viewings.
Second, and, again, this is probably unfair, is that the translated dialogue just doesn't compare at all to Shakespeare's text.
At all.
Reading the subtitles was like reading a perplexed students confused attempt to paraphrase Shakespeare.
This is unfair of me to complain about, because a) I can't blame Kurosawa for not having Shakespeare as a screenwriter and b) I have no idea how the text sounds to a native Japanese speaker.

On a deeper and more significant level, though, I would say that Ran lacks Lear's catharsis (the generation of pity and fear in the audience for the protagonist). It's true that Ran's protagonist, Lord Hidetora, initially shares Lear's hamartia (tragic flaw). Both are tired old rulers who attempt to slink off into retirement by dividing their country to their three children. (Lear only has daughters, Hidetora only has sons.) Both also banish the youngest, most honest and wise child, and both suffer horribly at the hands of the remaining offspring. Actually, Hidetora could theoretically evoke more pity since his sons actually massacre his royal guard in a bloody, gruesome, and totally awesome samurai showdown...whereas Lear's guard just sort of abandons him offstage. But you should pause and think about this for a second. In a movie where dozens of soldiers are shown being mowed down...crawling over corpses of comrades only to die clutching a fistful of dirt...how are we supposed to have any pity left to spend on a single old man who made a bad decision?

Kurosawa's film has very different goals than Shakespeare's play. I don't think it really intends for the viewer to experience the Western tragic convention catharsis (but I could be wrong on this). I say this because one of Lear's most piteable (and possibly pitiful) lines is that he is "a man more sinned against than sinning." Lear admits his folly, but cries out that the consequences are excessive. It's the kind of Shakespearean line that makes for impossible-to-answer undergraduate essay questions. Is Lear more sinned against than sinning? Maybe, maybe not. In either case, trusting his deceitful daughters Regan and Goneril and banishing the brutally honest Cordelia is pretty much the worst thing we see him do or even hear about him doing on stage. Indeed, some of the most effective performances of Lear I've seen have him vacillate from a raving, senilic, angry tyrant, to a broken, frail, senilic father.

Lord Hidetora, not so much (spoilers, ahoy!). He goes crazy, for sure...but we also find out that he was a bloodthirsty warlord who massacred and mutilated the families of his daughters-in-law before marrying them off to his sons to consolidate his power. As if that doesn't knock the wind out of potentially cathartic sails, Kurosawa conflates Shakespeare's Edgar and Gloucester. The Lord (with Fool and Kent analogues in tow) is given shelter in a storm by a hermit type figure, who turns out to be a young prince that Hidetora himself blinded! When the Lear figure subsumes the Cornwall figure into his character, it becomes very hard for an audience (or at least for Isabel and myself) to identify with him.

I'm not saying Kurosawa makes a mistake in the conflation. Indeed, it makes for a rather eye-opening subtext for Lear. At the very least, it undermines the demand that tragedy needs a noble protagonist. It's as if Kurosawa asks, "Who are these kings and princes that we should mourn their demise?"

Still, if Lear were as bloody-minded a tyrant as Hidetaro, then why do good people love him so much? Kent, the Fool, Cordelia, all flock to him. Their subtexts become easier to understand if Lear is less monstrous. That being said, Kurosawa reduces the cathartic nature of all these supporting characters as well. Lear's Cordelia figure--the son Saburo--has a drastically reduced role. The Fool, while having a far more expanded role (he actually sticks around for the whole movie), seems somehow less intimate with his master. Kurosawa's heaviest change comes with the Kent figure. Kent, after being banished by a mad Lear, returns to serve the king in disguise. One of the most heart-wrenching scenes in the play is when Kent finally reveals himself...but Lear is too far gone mentally to be able to understand what Kent is saying. It's probably one of the saddest things ever imagined for the stage. Kent has made the greatest sacrifice for love, but it goes completely (though unwittingly) unrecognized by the recipient. Kent is so crestfallen that he says he will go wander off and die from it...and I believe him.
Gets me weepy just thinking about it.

Kurosawa's version of Kent is Tango, but Tango is recognized immediately by Hidetaro. All that cathartic energy just gets sapped out.

But even this, perhaps, is part of the message. If Hidetaro no longer shares Lear's cuddly moments, then who are his followers that they should have our pity? Hidetaro deserves a certain degree of humanitrian treatment lest those around him become monsters as well--but affection on the scale of Kent seems wasted on him.

Any fear we feel stems not so much from becoming Hidetaro someday, but that Hidetaro might someday become our leader. Any pity we feel is drawn far more by the mangled, nameless royal guards that fall defending their tired leader than by the eye-gouging, father-slaying, warlord who dies of a heart-attack.