EA 190 Discussion Questions Week 8

Written Discussion Questions:

1. Ran is less of a direct adaptation of Shakespeare's King Lear than Throne of Blood was of Macbeth. As a starting point, try to figure out who the characters in Ran are parallel to in King Lear (note that some of the characters are doubled or even tripled). Characters: Ichimonji Hidetora; his sons Taro, Jiro, Saburo; neighboring daimyo lords Fujimaki and Ayabe; the fool Kyoami; Taro's wife Kaede; Jiro's wife Sue; Sue's brother Tsurumaru; Hidetora's retainers Tango and Ikoma; Taro's chief retainer, Ogura; Jiro's chief retainer Kurogane.

How does changing Lear's daughters to sons affect the meaning of the story for you? How does the subplot of Lady Kaede, Lady Sue and Tsurumaru substitute both for the Gloucester-Edmund-Edgar subplot, and supplement the story line of the filial/unfilial daughters?

2. One effect of the lack of backstory in King Lear is that it reinforces our sense that this play is about "mythic" issues rather than personal psychology. As in Throne of Blood, Kurosawa provides much more background information for the characters, thus "explaining" their behavior. Disaster and cruelty no longer have the mysterious, cosmic arbitrariness postulated by King Lear but are shown as the direct result of human error or wrong-doing. But does adding explanatory background make Ran more "realistic"? How does Kurosawa undercut the realism of his story, and create a sense of mythos? Issues to consider: the stylization of the movie (including the symbolic
use of color, visual patterns in the battle scenes and elsewhere) and the use of traditional character "types" (whose stereotyping is reinforced by their names and clothing). See also question 3 below.

Other questions to think about while watching Ran

1. Generally, pay attention to how Ran condenses, abbreviates, or intensifies events and character traits from King Lear. These moments are often key places of character revelation or plot development. A few examples: at the start of the film Saburo shades his father as Edgar does to Gloucester late in the play (5.2); the Duke of Albany denounces his wife Goneril as a fiend (4.2), whereas Jiro's main general (Kurogane) makes that charge against Lady Kaede (calling her a fox); the pantomime of Gloucester's fall becomes an actual fall by Hidetora at the ruins of a fortress he had destroyed.

2. The word Ran, which basically means "chaos," also has connotations of civil war, rebellion, turmoil, and anarchy. How is Lear's "mental inferno" portrayed visually through the exterior landscape? How does Kurosawa visually convey and intensify King Lear's nihilistic tendencies (the theme of "nothing/nothingness," the images of human society descending into chaos) not only at the end of the film, but throughout the movie?

3. Throne of Blood was in black and white, and Kurosawa said he based his use of color on black and white ink drawings (sumi-e); Ran is in hyper-color, and Kurosawa said he based his use of color on images from medieval scrolls depicting famous battles, such as the destruction of Sanjo castle (see also Kurosawa's extremely colorful storyboards, accompanying the English translation: part 1, part 2). How does Kurosawa use color to identify the characters and visually organize the battle scenes? How does this use of color make the action more symbolic/allegorical and less realistic? Does this have an effect on how you view what happens, especially the battle scenes?