jacx@homxb.UUCP (J.CADLEY) (02/19/86)
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I've just seen Kurosawa's new movie "Ran", and I'd like
to hear some opinions concerning its relation to "King Lear".
I went to the theater expecting a Japanese version of Lear.
The Lear story is clearly in the film. However, Kurosawa seems
to have made some significant modifications. I'm sure he was
aware of what he was doing, so I want to understand his
motivation for making some changes.
This discussion will be easier if we all know the names of the
characters involved. The following is a list of the names I
can recall from the film. Also included are the names of the
Shakespeare equivalents. Please forgive and correct any spelling
errors. Do make additions if you can recall any of the other
Japanese characters.
Great Lord Hidetora King Lear
His sons: His daughters:
Taro ?
Jiro Gonneril
Saburo (unmarried) Cordelia (unmarried)
Hidetora's fool Lear's fool
Tango (a Hidetora vassal) Kent
-no equivalent- Cornwall (married to ?)
Sue (wife to Jiro) Albany (married to Gonneril)
Tsurumaro (brother to Sue) -no equivalent-
? (another Great Lord) King of France
Ayabe (another Great Lord) -no equivalent-
-no equivalent- Glouster (a Lear vassal)
His sons:
-no equivalent- Edgar
Kiede (wife to Taro) Edmund (a bastard)
King Lear plot review: Lear is old. He wants to retire in peace.
He decides to divide his kingdom amongst his three daughters.
At the last minute, Lear mistakenly decides Cordelia does't love
him, so he exiles her. Kent objects. He gets exiled too.
Cordelia goes off to marry the King of France. Kent goes into
disguise to continue serving Lear. In order to seize total
power, Gonneril conspires with her sister to banish Lear. Lear
goes mad and disapears into the British plains. Meanwhile, Edmund
conspires against his father and brother. He makes it seem they
support the banished Lear. Edgar escapes, but Cornwall blinds Glouster.
A loyal servant then kills Cornwall. Edmund realy gets ambitious now.
He wants to be king. [?], Cornwall's widow, wants to marry Edmund.
So does Gonneril (she thinks her husband Albany is a wimp). Edmund
decides he'll marry Gonneril if she'll kill Albany. If she doesn't,
then he'll marry [?]. At last, Cordelia returns with a French army to
save her father. Edmund leads the British forces, defeats the French,
and captures Lear and Cordelia. Edmund orders Cordelia to be hung.
She dies. When Lear finds out, he dies. Gonneril poisons [?].
Edmund thinks he's almost king. Suddenly, Edgar shows up. He
accuses Edmund of the conspiracy. Edgar kills Edmund. Gonneril
kills herself. Albany the wimp is the last surviving leader. The
curtain falls.
What's different about Ran? Well, when Jiro kills Taro it is due
to ambition, not love. This is like having Gonneril kill her sister,
thereby making Gonneril the only legitimate heir to the throne.
Shakespeare did not write Lear that way, so it seems to me that
Kurosawa decided to change the story to emphasize the corrupting
effects of ambition. Later, Kiede causes Jiro to kill Sue. This
would be like Edmund convincing Gonneril to kill her husband Albany.
Once again, this is a deviation from Lear. It is different in that
Gonneril did not need external motivation to want to murder her husband,
and it is also different in that Kiede had a "moral" motive for
wanting Sue dead. Kiede wanted to destroy Hidetora's family because
he had destroyed her family when he was fighting to become a Great
Lord. Edmund is completely amoral. All he wants is power for himself.
I think Kurosawa made this change to reinforce his point about
the destructiveness of ambition. It is Hidetora's actions as a young
warlord which bring down his house. Lear's sin was misplaced love.
The complete absence of a Glouster character in Ran further shows
Kurosawa's indifference to Shakespeare's love theme (Glouster is also
punished for not trusting his son, Edgar).
The last difference I saw between Ran and King Lear was in the
resolution of the war. In King Lear, France is defeated and Albany
carries on the line of British kings. In Ran, Hidetora's kingdom
is destroyed by another Great Lord, Ayabe (not the Great Lord Saburo
took refuge with). Pehaps it was just unacceptable in Shakespeare's
time to have France defeat Britain. Maybe Kurosawa was correcting
a flaw in Shakespeare, but I don't think so. I think Kurosawa
was attempting to show that ambition ultimately brings utter
destruction. At the end of Lear we have hope for Britain because
Albany carries on the line. At the end of Ran we know Hidetora's
kingdom is destroyed forever.
Overlaid on the Ran story is a strong anti-war theme, a theme which
is absent from King Lear. I believe there are even allusions to
nuclear war and the MAD doctrine (during the final battle scenes).
All of the above makes me wonder why Kurosawa decided to make this
film. He seems to have taken the story in a completely different
direction than did Shakespeare. This doesn't bother me, but it
does make me very curious as to his motivations. If you've seen the
movie, then please do post or send me your opinions.
John Cadley
AT&T Consumer Products Labs
Neptune, NJ
channic@uiucdcsb.CS.UIUC.EDU (02/20/86)
When Siskel and Ebert reviewed Ran they said that Kurosawa was interviewed about halfway through the production. When asked about the similarities to King Lear he said something to the effect that he hadn't been aware of any parallels! Shakespeare reincarnate? Tom Channic University of Illinois ihnp4!pur-ee!uiucdcs!channic
leeper@mtgzz.UUCP (m.r.leeper) (02/24/86)
>When Siskel and Ebert reviewed Ran they said that Kurosawa >was interviewed about halfway through the production. When >asked about the similarities to King Lear he said something >to the effect that he hadn't been aware of any parallels! When I reviewed RAN I remembered hearing this, but not where I had heard it. There has been some discussion on the net about it since then. I am glad someone else has heard that Kurosawa denied basing RAN on LEAR. The similarities are really too great to be coincidence. He did claim it was based on a classic Japanese legend. I think there may be something of some legend in it, but for a strange reason. The two ungrateful sons are called Taro and Jiro. Evelyn reminded me that those names were associated in another film. Those were the names of the two main sled dogs who became the main characters of ANTARCTICA. It could be just coincidence, or it could be that ANTARCTICA had a reference to the same legend. (Yes, I know that Taro and Jiro were real dogs since ANTARCTICA is a true story, but the real dogs may have been named for the sons in the legend.) Mark Leeper ...ihnp4!mtgzz!leeper