Event Details
In person: Academy Collection and Preservation Executive Vice President Matt Severson
The intricate family dynamics of Shakespeare’s King Lear are transposed to 16th-century Japan—a century of social unrest and near-continuous civil wars—in this late-career masterpiece from the 75-year-old filmmaker. After more than a decade of meticulous planning, including gorgeous storyboards painted by the filmmaker himself, Kurosawa’s sweeping psychological epic was made possible due to the financial support of the same adventurous financier who backed Spanish-Mexican filmmaker Luis Buñuel’s final five films. At the time the most expensive movie ever made in Japan, Ran also marks the director’s first and only Best Directing nomination at the Oscars; costume designer Emi Wada won for Best Costume Design; Yoshio Muraki and Shinobu Muraki were nominated for Art Direction; and Takao Saito, Masaharu Ueda, and Asakazu... Nakai were nominated for Cinematography.
Academy Museum film programming generously funded by the Richard Roth Foundation.
1985 | 160 min. | Japan | Color | Japanese with English subtitles | Rated R | 35mm
DIRECTED BY: Akira Kurosawa
WRITTEN BY: Akira Kurosawa, Hideo Oguni, Masato Ide
BASED ON A PLAY BY: William Shakespeare
WITH: Tatsuya Nakadai, Akira Terao, Jinpachi Nezu, Daisuke Ryu