Worth Seeing. Again.

Lughnasa                                          Waning Grandchildren Moon

Saw Ran yesterday.  The film’s remastering did not make it as crisp as I imagined, but it was good.  The storyline is similar, though not identical to Lear.

The lead character, the Lear equivalent, is Lord Hidetora, the terror of the Azusa plain in yesteryear, now old and wanting to lay down his reign.  He chooses his eldest son, Taro to replace him.  Primogenitor lies at the heart of many classic tales and Ran shares this theme with Lear and the Romance of the Three Kingdoms.  Why?  Well, passing over the eldest son created an automatic schism based on traditional expectations.  Choosing the eldest son, however, is not a meritocratic approach and can yield, as it does in Ran, a weak leader at the top.  Result?  The same as the other option.  Oh, well.  You’d think they’d figure this out.

Hidetora finds Taro and Jiro, his eldest two sons, unwilling to have him in their homes, spurred on by Lady Kaeda, the scheming and heartbroken daughter born in Hidetora’s first castle to the father and mother he killed in taking it.  Her scheming drives the movies plot dynamics as male pawns shove soldiers around the chessboard in response to her plans.

I said she was an evil woman.  Sheila said, no, she was avenging her family.  Not exclusive ideas.  Yes, she avenged her family with the tools she had available to her, sex and inside knowledge of power politics, but that doesn’t excuse her from judgment.  You could say, in fact, that Hidetora, Jiro, Taro and Lady Kaede were all evil in their way, while the third son, Saburo, who plays Cordelia to Jiro and Taro’s Goneril and Regan, dies an innocent, loyal to his father.  The quadrumvirate hacked and murdered and intrigued their way to power.  They died, each of them, as a direct result of their behavior and, in turn, killed the only filial child.

This is a movie about power, violence, loyalty, existentialism, group and family honor and angst.

Here is a key moment, early in the movie, with Saburo speaking to his father, Lord Hidetora:

Sabour:  What kind of world do we live
in?

One barren of loyalty and
feeling.

Hidetora:  I'm aware of that.

Saburo:  So you should be!

You spilled an ocean of blood.

You showed no mercy, no pity.

We too are children
of this age...

weaned on strife and chaos.

We are your sons,
yet you count on our fidelity.

In my eyes,
that makes you a fool.

Later, the Jester says:  Man is born crying.

When he's cried enough, he dies.

Later:

Hidetora:  I'm lost.

Jester:  Such is the human condition.

Hidetora:  This path...

I remember...

We came this way before.

Men always travel the same road.