lo@harvard.UUCP (Bert S.F. Lo) (01/29/86)
I guess I'm a bit late on these 2 discussions. I just got around to seeing them
in the past week or so.
Ran is definitely over-rated, but I certainly wouldn't say it was at the same
level as kung-fu flicks, as someone else did. The production values are great:
sets, locations, costumes, music etc. You certainly can't complain about the
plot. The problem is that the movie grinds to a halt after about an hour. There
seemed to be too much time spent on Hiratora's going/being insane. I think that
the viewer is supposed to either sympathize with Hiratora or simply come to an
understanding or realization that this was his fate or destiny for having
followed his plan. The insanity scenes were so slow, though, that all I thought
was how I wanted him to die and get it over with (the movie, not his agony).
Now, I'm not saying that the movie should have been sped up to the Raiders
level, but it seemed that the first hour was decently well paced and then
the second hour slowed to a snail's crawl. If the entire thing were as slow as
the second half, I would have been in synch with it. Perhaps the slowed pace
was deliberate, perhaps to suggest the endless misery that his plan had brought
upon him, but I just couldn't get into it. Anyway, not counting the kung-fu and
Godzilla movies, Ran didn't seem all that different from other Japanese epics.
As for The Color Purple, I came close to hating this movie. I would recommend
it to others but personally, when I see a dramatic movie that tries to say
something about real people and their lives, I don't want to be jerked around
by music or other production tricks. There seemed to be so many things to be
said about the black woman's experience in this film but thanks to the produc-
tion tricks, it all came across like just another soap opera. There was a film
out in 40's or 50's, I think it was called The Best Of Everything, about a
struggling white woman and her black maid. It was a real soap opera. In a way,
The Color Purple brings about as much understanding as that movie: none. It
makes you cry for what the characters goes through but it doesn't really make
you feel for others in the real world. Perhaps I had the wrong expectations.
I'll say that it was a great soap opera but a lousy drama.
Anyway, I was quite disappointed by both pictures. A movie I saw recently that
I much preferred was Colonel Redl. I know it hasn't played too many places and
it's already been around for quite some time, but if it comes by, I would sug-
gest you go see it. If there's anyone out there who saw it, I'd like to ask
about a couple of plot details that I didn't quite get.
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