The Bad Sleep Well, Akira Kurosawa 1960
Ran, Akira Kurosawa 1985
I had a bit of an Asian Cinema Week a little while back as I chewed through the delightful
An Autumn Afternoon and the two
Red Cliff films. To top off the week I ended with a double Kurosawa bill -
The Bad Sleep Well, and his 80s epic
Ran.
Although rather different films stylistically, thematically both films investigate greed, corruption and revenge amongst family and business.
The Bad Sleep Well is a suit-and-tie film noir which focuses on the corruption in Japan's post-war corporate society; with
Ran highlighting greed, power and revenge in 16th century Japan in a retelling of Shakespeare's King Lear.
The opening scene of
TBSW's wedding reception (below) is so exquisitely designed and choreographed, Kurosawa capturing the room's scale, dimensions, and large cast of characters effectively on screen.
The (limited) narrative divulged in this opening scene is told informatively through the media in attendance at the wedding reception.
Toshiro Mifune is a stalwart in Kurosawa films with a varied range of character types, never ceasing to fully and effectively embody his characters on screen. He does a stellar job in
TBSW to convey the suppressed anger which bubbles beneath, and eventually comes to, the character's surface.
As the film progresses, the audiences knows very little about the major plot, and it's only towards the end that Kurosawa reveals his cards and divulges the intentions and history of the main characters.
The Bad Sleep Well, like Kurosawa's
High and Low from 1963, is a captivating suit-and-tie thriller which highlights the corruption of the modern corporate world.
Ran is an epic, what can I say.
The film features several really well-crafted battle scenes, and the characters are all filled with such raw emotion. A standout performance is Mieko Harada as the devious Lady Kaede, her embodiment of this blood-thirsty character is bewildering.
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Check out that facial hair |
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Don't mess with Lady Kaede (Mieko Harada) |
"The themes of Ran are the evil of humanity, the deadly heritage of warfare, and madness. But in showing all this horror, Kurosawa leaves us one great consolation: the beauty of the art with which he reveals it all." - Michael Wilmington