All language subtitles for Classic.Movies.The.Story.Of.S01E05.1080p.WEB.h264-EDITH_track3_[eng]

af Afrikaans
ak Akan
sq Albanian
am Amharic
ar Arabic
hy Armenian
az Azerbaijani
eu Basque
be Belarusian
bem Bemba
bn Bengali
bh Bihari
bs Bosnian
br Breton
bg Bulgarian
km Cambodian
ca Catalan
ceb Cebuano
chr Cherokee
ny Chichewa
zh-CN Chinese (Simplified)
zh-TW Chinese (Traditional)
co Corsican
hr Croatian
cs Czech
da Danish
nl Dutch
en English
eo Esperanto
et Estonian
ee Ewe
fo Faroese
tl Filipino
fi Finnish
fr French
fy Frisian
gaa Ga
gl Galician
ka Georgian
de German
gn Guarani
gu Gujarati
ht Haitian Creole
ha Hausa
haw Hawaiian
iw Hebrew
hi Hindi
hmn Hmong
hu Hungarian
is Icelandic
ig Igbo
id Indonesian
ia Interlingua
ga Irish
it Italian
ja Japanese
jw Javanese
kn Kannada
kk Kazakh
rw Kinyarwanda
rn Kirundi
kg Kongo
ko Korean
kri Krio (Sierra Leone)
ku Kurdish
ckb Kurdish (Soranî)
ky Kyrgyz
lo Laothian
la Latin
lv Latvian
ln Lingala
lt Lithuanian
loz Lozi
lg Luganda
ach Luo
lb Luxembourgish
mk Macedonian
mg Malagasy
ms Malay
ml Malayalam
mt Maltese
mi Maori
mr Marathi
mfe Mauritian Creole
mo Moldavian
mn Mongolian
my Myanmar (Burmese)
sr-ME Montenegrin
ne Nepali
pcm Nigerian Pidgin
nso Northern Sotho
no Norwegian
nn Norwegian (Nynorsk)
oc Occitan
or Oriya
om Oromo
ps Pashto
fa Persian
pl Polish
pt-BR Portuguese (Brazil)
pt Portuguese (Portugal)
pa Punjabi
qu Quechua
ro Romanian
rm Romansh
nyn Runyakitara
ru Russian
sm Samoan
gd Scots Gaelic
sr Serbian
sh Serbo-Croatian
st Sesotho
tn Setswana
crs Seychellois Creole
sn Shona
sd Sindhi
si Sinhalese
sk Slovak
sl Slovenian
so Somali
es Spanish
es-419 Spanish (Latin American)
su Sundanese
sw Swahili
sv Swedish
tg Tajik
ta Tamil
tt Tatar
te Telugu
th Thai
ti Tigrinya
to Tonga
lua Tshiluba
tum Tumbuka
tr Turkish
tk Turkmen
tw Twi
ug Uighur
uk Ukrainian
ur Urdu
uz Uzbek
vi Vietnamese
cy Welsh
wo Wolof
xh Xhosa
yi Yiddish
yo Yoruba
zu Zulu
Would you like to inspect the original subtitles? These are the user uploaded subtitles that are being translated: 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 51996

Can't find what you're looking for?
Get subtitles in any language from opensubtitles.com, and translate them here.