MovieChat Forums > Ran (1985) Discussion > 'The Master'

'The Master'

posted 14 years ago by tvguy29
4 replies | jump to latest

Kurosawa did not achieve this title by luck or happenstance.

He earned it through years of toil, effort, vision, fortitude, and his philosophy of art through film. Lucas and Coppola saw the genius, recognized his craft (unfiltered and un-homogenized) for what it was, and fronted a majority of the capital needed to make Kurosawa's previous film, Kagemusha.

One must understand that "Ran" is a vessel of history, not only of the time by which the film tells it's story, but also of the time in which it was made. There are no special visual effects in this film.....every singe moving figure within the frame is a living, breathing person. Watch the attack on the 3rd castle again. Take in the sheer number of personnel involved in the making of those scenes. We're talking thousands of extras, thousands of hand-made costumes, and thousands of props. Try finding the budget, the wherewithal, and time to put something like that together today. Most major film directors will tell you it cannot (and should not) be done. It is simply too much of a logistical nightmare to achieve by today's mainstream movie standards. Nor does it make financial sense do even attempt to do so. It is much easier and cost-effective to "animate" an army of thousands where the real one would be.

Movies on this scale will most likely not be made again. Fortunately, Kurosawa was one of the last to work in this era, and to utilize this style to it's fullest potential. His message (taken mostly from the work of Shakespeare's King Lear) will resonate through the ages.

[–] land-on-the-moon 14 years ago

or "Sensei" : -)

I saw a very nice documentary "The Making Of Ran", mostly built like an essay and shot exactly during the making of the film , and I'd recommended it to watch Akira Kurosawa working.

As far as the special effects are concerned - I read somewhere that actually they burnt down only one castle, another one showed burning was an optical effect.
And honestly I'm happy nowadays we have CGI - it's less polluting : o) ... but a little more technique and soul wouldn't be bad in these new wave of historical-mythological movies.

[–] AlftheSacredBurro 14 years ago

Now, CGI is good in cases where one is unable to do something without sets, but if you watch something like Conan the Barbarian, the sets make that movie great. If it were all CGI, like some movies *cough* Star Wars Prequels *cough cough* much of the effect would be lost. Realism, of all things, plays a huge role in not only art films, but pure escapism like Conan as well, and might even turn the latter into the former with age. CGI has it's place, Spielberg, I think, is still the director who's used it best in Jurassic Park. The mix of animatronics and cgi is brilliant.

As for CGI being less polluting...the sheer scope of power required to create films like the raping of star wars, the matrix, Tron, all these CGI laden movies, is a lot more than one might think, and all forms of fuel currently in use are unsustainable in the longterm. Computers require minerals, many rare and "unethically" mined. They cost not only environmental health, but human lives. 1 million died to make those sounds. Not only that, but where do you think your electricity comes from? If you are alive, at some point you become a pollutant. Humans are parasitic. Making a decent movie set and then burning it is not even a fraction of the problem of pollution....

....which by the way, is a human problem, not a planet problem. Everyone telling you to save the Earth, they're either foolish or selling something, the Earth will be fine, you want to save something, try saving your fellow man. We'll be the ones suffering ourselves, the planet will just swallow us and birth something new.

Debt and debt and debt and debt and debt and then All will be enslaved.

[–] land-on-the-moon 14 years ago

well, honestly, I'm not familiar with the film industry & the input necessary to built the sets/ create it on computers - I just assumed a piece of program / some animation can be easier recycled to fit in another movie, as opposed to using all the paraphernalia of cheap plastics & timber to built for each film a set (which btw, can damage & harm people too - as much as, for instance, the outsourcing business-style did in most of the cases... but this is a huge topic, the parasites, pollution & people behind it, and can't be covered here)

Strangely, I liked Conan for the characters & actors :-), didn't look too much at the sets, as opposed to the pre-sequels - which I thought created nicely the atmosphere but lacked the idea to animate the actors (anyway, the story had already been told - and hit like a magic bullet - almost a quarter of a century ago)

... still, it's difficult to see in our "new world" some director holding on as Kurasawa did, and not running out of (limited) resources.

[–] AlftheSacredBurro 13 years ago

To your last statement, land-onthemoon, true that.

The only problem I have with CGI is that, while many movies are escapist fare, computer generated environments often detract from the simply because they are obviously computer generated. And there's a difference between a CGI environment and a CGI character or creature, like, for instance, the Balrog in Fellowship of the ring, and Gollum, both of whom were extremely well done, (though Shelob in ROTK was kind of poor), and the piss poor environments of many modern movies. I strongly encourage you watch Conan the Barbarian again and take time to check out the various sets. They're fantastic. And the great thing is that they're not overly extravagant Lucasian affairs.

Debt and debt and debt and debt and debt and then All will be enslaved.