Filming King Lear and Kurosawa Akira's Ran

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to analyze Ran as Kurosawa's special adaptation of King Lear, and to explore the reason Ran gets the best compliments compared with the other films of King Lear produced in Western countries. Kurosawa shows an eastern view of the world which is represented by the rotating cycle of the past, the present, and the future, while we find some different western views of Shakespeare's King Lear, such as dual conflicts between good and evil, and between old generation and new generation. The suffering and unhappiness which Kurosawa's hero, Hydetora endures are presented as the result of his past cruel behaviors. However, Kurosawa's view of the world is not moralistic, but quite pessimistic. Both the innocent and the criminal cannot avoid pain and death. The innocent can't change the world, being the victims of this evil world. The world Kurosawa portrays is the one full of pain and agony rather than evil and corruption, while Shakespeare in King Lear criticizes the corrupted world where liars and thieves prosper, and where the powerful and the wealthy don't care the poor. The world upside down is what Shakespeare portrays through the suffering of Lear who goes through the fall from a king to a mad beggar. This subverted life of a king and his realization of the truth becomes the typical fate of a tragic hero in the traditional sense of tragedy, and the prerequisite of the renewal of human life in this world. Therefore, while the world of King Lear may suggest morality and change through condemnation and mockery, the world of Ran denies the possibility of hope and change through desperation and death. The reason why Ran gets more compliments than other films of King Lear lies not only in Kurosawa's excellent camera techniques and the screen constitution of symbolic solemnity. Kurosawa succeeds in presenting the essential view of human cruelty and the pessimistic world by using the main plot of King Lear, in which an old man is betrayed by his own children. He adapted this view of the world to a historical age of Samurai in Japan. In King Lear, we can find more complex and various views of the world and human life. However, in Ran, we can find more painful and desperate views of the world, which is represented through beautiful scenery and calm appreciation.