2023 Tarkovsky Prize 3rd Place: Catherine Hung

RAN

by Catherine Hung

Akira Kurosawa’s Ran is nothing short of a beautifully tragic and visually devastating masterpiece. The 1985 action drama dances and pierces its audience with the usages of colour and symbolism through the impact of consistent themes to draw you into the complex world of Ran. 

Colour is a prominent character in the film, representing multiple characters and setting an environment. Initially, the three sons have their primary colours—red, gold-yellow, and blue, with their father Hidetora Ichimonji donning a silver-yellow outfit. However, as the film progresses, red, the original colour for the eldest son Taro, is stripped from his literal corpse and taken by the second son, Jiro. Something to note here is the fact that red is seen as a prosperous colour in Japanese culture, which is interesting considering the red colour seems to symbolise all-having power and strength in the film. It is no mistake that Jiro essentially replaces his brother, taking his title of the Great Lord of the Ichimonji as well as Taro’s wife, Lady Kaede.

I noticed something intriguing whilst watching Ran in regards to colour: both Taro and Jiro are warm-toned colours, red and yellow respectively, yet Saburo, the youngest as well as the most logical and defiant brother, represents the colour blue. 

This cool-toned versus warm-toned battle is consistent throughout the film when later on, most of those who are in the “morally right” and “correct” are wearing blue or something cool-coloured, such as Tango, Hidetora’s main advisor and later follower of Saburo. Interestingly enough, the two other clans that are unrelated to the Ichimonji family affair and are more active bystanders are represented by white and black, which are not colours but shades. This shows their detached nature from the main story and how they are simply observing from the sidelines without getting mixed up in their colour war.

Hidetora’s initial silver-yellow outfit slowly becomes white and flowing as Ran progresses, symbolising the spiralling nature of his mental state, as well as grief and death. It’s almost ghost-like whenever Hidetora walks or stumbles as though he’s no longer living yet still haunting his own body. In the scene after the Third Castle was destroyed, Hidetora quietly struggles out of the burnt, arrow and ammunition-filled castle where both Taro and Jiro’s army are waiting outside, weapons ready to attack if Hidetora made any dangerous moves. Yet they move aside as Hidetora walks through them like he is Moses parting the Red Sea. He’s pale as ash and sickly looking like a corpse, yet they do not attack him. Hidetora has truly lost everything, and as he walks out of the castle gates and into the storm ahead of him, his bright, dynamic white outfit shines through the dust and fog. It symbolises death.

To even further explain this point, another prominent character who ultimately dies after being stricken with so much grief is Kaede. Her family was killed and their land was stolen by Hidetora, so her entire plot is to take revenge on Hidetora and the entire clan of Ichimonji. She starts off wearing a pale dark blue-silver, a colour of “logic,” and ends with her wearing a white, flowing dress. White symbolising death is also very common in East Asian cultures, and I believe this sort of ghostly-white appearance is intentional by Kurosawa, as in another film he directed called Dreams, there too is a character dressed in white symbolising death.

Symbolism is by far one of the most important things in the film as it encapsulates both colour and space. Kurosawa expertly foreshadows the end of the film through the fool, Kyoami. He’s the foil to Hidetora, starting off illogical and idiotic then revealing himself as more knowledgeable and intelligent. In the beginning, Kyoami is a stereotypical jester character with the jester's privilege, which is the right of a jester to talk and mock freely without being punished for it. He’s protected by this privilege, just like how Hidetora was protected by his title of Great Lord and his reputation. Kyoami is loyal to Hidetora, unlike Hidetora’s loyalty to his family. There are later instances where these two are compared. 

One example of a comparison of the lord and jester in the film is a scene at the very start where Hidetora requests Kyoami to make a joke. He does an act where he looks off into the distance, almost unconsciously, following something in the distance, which makes everyone else follow his gaze. Everyone else sees nothing, and then Kyoami bursts out with a comedic joke, causing almost everyone to laugh. Saburo is the only one to not find Kyoami humorous and even taunts him in front of everyone, showing more of Saburo’s rationality. Then, later on in Ran, as Hidetora slowly succumbs to his madness, grief, and guilt, he does the exact same thing Kyoami does: he looks off into the distance while everyone follows his eyes. Except, this time, he starts screaming instead of laughing, his fears eating at his bones, and falls back. He is accompanied by Kyoami, the fool, who witnesses his former Great Lord fall from his honour, and this comparison of the two really shows Kurosawa’s incredible symbolism.

These two scenes create an implication that Hidetora is now the fool, no longer respectable and has fallen from grace. The fact that Kyoami watches this happen with a sensible and intelligent mind is a complete flip from the beginning of the film.

Another scene that was especially significant in the way Kurosawa uses symbolism in Ran is in the final scene when Saburo gets killed right after he and Hidetora reconcile. During Saburo’s death, there are four people total in the scene: Hidetora, Tango, Kyoami, and of course, Saburo himself. They surround his corpse as they all sob for their fallen friend and family. However, the important thing here is not exactly Saburo’s death, but the number of people there were during it. Four is an unlucky number in Japanese culture. The reason for this is due to its secondary pronunciation, which, instead of “yon,” it’s pronounced as “shi.” This change in pronunciation, which is prevalent in both Japanese and Chinese languages, symbolises death, hence why it’s an unlucky number. “Shi,” with a subtle tonal shift, can sound exactly like the word death. 

Ran is a film that I can analyse for aeons about, how Kurosawa masterfully uses colouring lighting in his set designs, the way symbolism connects space and foreshadowing, and overall the dramatic, almost ironic, tragedy of a beautiful piece of work. I would recommend all of Kurosawa’s films to anyone who enjoys Shakespearean tragedies and desires a more unfortunate yet realistic slice of life.