Sightlines · how to watch
How to watch Ran
1985 · Akira Kurosawa · Ran on Sightlines
5 things to watch and listen for on a first viewing, without spoilers, and 4 more once you have seen it. Each names something you can see or hear, the pattern it belongs to, and what noticing it gives you. How these keys work.
On a first viewing
Look at the color each son's army is wearing. (light)
Yellow for Taro, red for Jiro, blue-green for Saburo. Emi Wada's costumes make loyalty readable at any distance, so you can follow a battle by watching blocks of color move on the ground.
Payoff: Color is the film's map. Once you learn the three shades, you always know who is advancing on whom without a word of explanation. In the reading: affective color. The reading calls this affective color: a hue that takes on the whole feeling of a scene rather than just marking a side.
Notice how flat the armies look against the landscape. (camera)
Kurosawa shoots long, and telephoto compression crushes the depth out of the volcanic plains. Soldiers stop reading as individual men and start reading as masses of pigment laid on scorched ground.
Payoff: The lens turns warfare into something you look at rather than follow. Distance is what makes the scale legible and the death abstract.
Watch Nakadai's eyes when Hidetora is being spoken to. (performance)
The face is built on Noh masks without becoming one, and the eyes are deliberately vacant. Nakadai holds the blankness while the emotional weather goes on around him.
Payoff: You can read that stare as old age or as horror, and the film wants both available at once. It never settles the question for you. In the reading: icon of quality (qualisign). The reading calls this a qualisign: a still face holding one quality rather than reacting its way through a scene.
Notice how often Hidetora is placed at the exact center. (staging)
Kurosawa storyboarded the film in watercolor for years, and the compositions are formal to the point of ritual. Figures hold arrested postures, and doorways, ramps, and platforms are used as thresholds to be crossed.
Payoff: The blocking comes from Noh rather than from drama. Ceremony is doing the work that dialogue and movement do in an ordinary epic.
Listen for music telling you how to feel about a scene. (sound)
Takemitsu wrote for Western orchestra while absorbing the coloration of gagaku court music. The score builds desolation and refuses the emotional signposting of Hollywood epic scoring.
Payoff: Nothing cues your reaction. The music grieves at its own pace, often out of step with what is happening in front of you.
The 4 rewatch keys open on this page when you choose "Seen it?".
Carry this in: Watch what Hidetora is able to do once his sons move. The most powerful man becomes a spectator.