Ran

Overview

Ran is Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa's reinterpretation of William Shakespeare's +King Lear. The Lear counterpart is an elderly 16th-century warlord (Tatsuya Nakadai), who announces that he's about to divide his kingdom equally among his three sons. In his dotage, he falls prey to the false flattery of his treacherous sons (Akira Terao and Jinpachi Nezu), while banishing his youngest son (Daisuke Ryu), the only member of the family who loves him enough to tell him the unvarnished truth. Thanks to his foolish pride, his domain collapses under its own weight as the sons battle each other over total control. Kurosawa's first film in five years, Ran had been in the planning stages for twice that long; Kurosawa had storyboarded the project with a series of vivid color paintings that have since been published in book form in England. The battle scenes are staged with such brutal vigor that it's hard to imagine that the director was 75 years old at the time. This 160-minute historical epic won several international awards, but it was not a hit in Japan, and it would be five more years before Kurosawa would be able to finance another picture.

Product Details

Release Date:	08/03/2021
UPC:	0887936850035
Original Release:	1985
Rating:	NR
Source:	Lionsgate
Language:	English
Time:	2:42:00
Sales rank:	30,548

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Tatsuya Nakadai	Hidetora Ichimonji
Akira Terao	Taro Takatora Ichimonji
Jinpachi Nezu	Jiromasatora Ichimonji
Daisuke Ryu	Saburonaotora Ichimonji
Mieko Harada	Lady Kaede
Yoshiko Miyazaki	Lady Sue
Masayuki Yui	Tango
Hitoshi Ueki	Fujimaki
Peter	Kyoami
Hisashi Ikawa	Kurogane
Takeshi Nomura	Tsurumaru,Tsurumaru,Tsurumaru
Jun Tazaki	Ayabe
Norio Matsui	Ogura
Kenji Kodama	Shirane
Binpachi Ito	Naganuma
Takeshi Kato	Hatakeyama
Hisashi Igawa	Shuri Kurogane
Kazuo Katô	Kageyu Ikoma
Takashi Watanabe	Actor
Takao Zushi	Actor,Actor
Tetsuo Yamashita	Actor
Akihiko Sugizaki	Actor
Masaaki Sasaki	Actor
Yoshimitsu Yamaguchi	Actor
Masuo Amada	Actor
Masaru Sakurai	Actor
Sakae Kimura	Actor
Hanbei Kawai	Actor
Yûichi Hibi	Actor
Tokie Kanda	Sue's lady in waiting
Sawako Kochi	Hidetora's concubine
Kumeko Otowa	Sue's lady in waiting
Heihachiro Suzuki	Fujimaki's General
Susumu Terajima	Foot soldier
Haruko Tôgô	Kaede's lady in waiting
Ryûjirô Oki	Actor
Daisuke Oka	Actor
Toshiya Ito	Naganuma
Tôru Takemitsu	Composer

Technical Credits

Akira Kurosawa

Masato Ide

Hideo Oguni

William Shakespeare

Akira Kurosawa	Director,Screenwriter
Masato Ide	Screenwriter
Hideo Oguni	Screenwriter
Katsumi Furukawa	Executive Producer,Producer
Masato Hara	Producer
Serge Silberman	Producer
Takayuki Goto	Sound Effects
Soichi Inoue	Sound Effects
Takenori Misawa	Sound Effects
Hideo Takeichi	Sound Effects
Claude Villand	Sound Effects
William Shakespeare	Screenwriter
Masato Harada	Producer

Scene Index

Introduction ix

My Half: Kind Candor xvi

Part I The Emotional Ingredients 1

Gratitude 3

Self-Awareness 11

Accountability 17

Optimism 23

Empathy 27

Kindness 33

Tenacity 39

Curiosity 45

Patience 51

Conviction 55

Humility 59

Ambition 65

Part II Real-Life Scenarios 69

Part III Exercises 175

Conclusion 191

The inspiration Behind This Book 195

Acknowledgments 197

Notes 199

Editorial Reviews

Overwhelming in scope and magnificent in visual style, Ran is less an adaptation of Shakespeare's King Lear than an amplification of its themes of greed, betrayal, and honor. Though set during the turbulent Muromachi period in Japan, the film achieves a surprising universality by perfectly marrying style and content. Master director Akira Kurosawa distilled the play and stripped it of its numerous lengthy speeches (Kurosawa accused Shakespeare of being too wordy). In their stead, he packed the film with images pregnant with resonance and visual poetry. Deftly employing all of the techniques associated with his long career, Kurosawa creates a powerful portrayal of a kingdom coming apart at the seams through such techniques as dynamic, painterly compositions that emphasize depth of field; striking, expressionistic color; and brilliant sound design. In one scene, Kurosawa confronts the viewer with a silent, dream-like montage of human brutality: concubines committing ritual suicide, soldiers porcupined with arrows, spilling blood, and grisly dismembered limbs. In that same scene, the ghost-like Hidetora, Kurosawa's Lear, witnesses the armies of his two sons, one bedecked in brilliant yellow, the other in equally vibrant red, clash on the black slopes of Mount Fuji. Few films have imbued battle sequences with such beauty and with such horror. Tatsuya Nakadai gives perhaps the finest performance of his long career as the former vainglorious tyrant who slowly fills with shame and regret as his world comes crashing down, while Mieko Harada is flawlessly ruthless as the revenge seeking Lady Kaede. A brilliant cinematic feast ten years in the making, Ran proved to be the last masterwork by one of the greatest filmmakers.

07/29/2019

Arnold’s debut is a lyrical but long-winded portrayal of a woman reckoning with the disappointments of her life. Ash passes her days swimming at a deserted lake with her seven-year-old daughter, Charlie. When she senses Charlie grow distant as she gets older, Ash commits an unforgivable act while trying to reconnect. This sets in motion the crumbling of Ash’s emotional world, revealing memories of an affair with her yoga instructor, a capricious bisexual woman, and a complicated relationship with her father. Ash slips into a depression that confines her to bed, forcing her husband into the arms of a family friend who comes by to care for Charlie. The narrator’s idiosyncratic, troubled personality is expressed through her obsessive interest in sounds and words. During her first date with her husband, she tells him that she collects words, stating that “finding the right word is like finding a pebble on a whole beach of pebbles.” Arnold uses language like a set of dominoes, connecting endings of sentences to beginnings with sounds and phrases to create an artful tumble of prose. However, the novel’s high style comes at the price of momentum, and it becomes opaque to the point of being inaccessible. With very little plot, Arnold’s novel asks questions of profound moral consequence that get lost in the fogginess of its narrator. (July)

Publishers Weekly

Any serious student of Reformed theology needs to sit at the feet of Petrus van Mastricht. The challenge has been that to do so you needed to know Latin or Dutch. Thanks to the herculean efforts of the folks at the Dutch Reformed Translation Society and Reformation Heritage Books, English readers can now learn the art of ‘living for God through Christ.’” —Stephen J. Nichols, president of Reformation Bible College and chief academic officer of Ligonier Ministries


“With each translation of the formative Reformed theologians of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries comes the possibility of our churches being renewed by forgotten treasures. This is one of those gold mines. So important is van Mastricht that even Descartes felt obliged to respond to his critiques and Jonathan Edwards drew deeply from the well of his Theoretical-Practical Theology. It is a distinct pleasure to recommend this remarkable gem.” —Michael Horton, J. Gresham Machen Professor of Systematic Theology and Apologetics, Westminster Seminary California


“The very title of this work, Theoretical-Practical Theology, indicates why, three centuries ago, Petrus van Mastricht’s work appealed to Scottish ministers who studied under him or read his theology. Not least of these was his student James Hog, who would later famously republish The Marrow of Modern Divinity. In making van Mastricht’s classic available in English for a new generation of students, pastors, and scholars, the Dutch Reformed Translation Society and Reformation Heritage Books are giving a great gift to the Christian church as a whole, and to students, pastors, and scholars in particular.” —Sinclair B. Ferguson, Chancellor’s Professor of Systematic Theology, Reformed Theological Seminary; and teaching fellow, Ligonier Ministries

From the Publisher