Ran - horny teenagers need not apply

When I was in high school, my best friend, also named John, was a huge Akira Kurosawa enthusiast. The idea of sitting through 3-hour, black-and-white, samurai warrior epics could not have appealed to me less. John would tell me scenes from the movie and practically beg me to watch it, but there were Forces far greater than friendship working beneath the surface. I was in love/lust with Suzie, a cute Vietnamese-American chick whose obsession with sappy, 80's, teen movies was in direct contrast to my taste in movies. The sexual highlight of my high school years was when Suzie buried her face in my shoulder for 30 seconds as Glenn Close attacked Michael Douglas with a knife in Fatal Attraction. Sitting 3 hours in John's living room and watching anything without Suzie in the picture had no chance of happening. Of course, my passive-aggressive dating technique to become best friends with Suzie, then Hope for something to happen, wasn't a success. She left me for a college kid who drove a Porsche, butthat'sanotherstoryandIdon'twanttotalkaboutitrightnow!

...

Still, I couldn't blame her. She was cute as a button, it was high school and I was up to my eyeballs in self-deprecating longing.

Good thing I got THAT out of my system...

I CANNOT, however, forgive Suzie for her taste in movies. How I could willingly spend money to witness the vacuous train-wrecks called Johnny Be Good, Teen Wolf, and Short Circuit instead of bowing to John's enthusiastic rants and watched Rashomon, The Seven Samurai, or Throne of Blood is beyond me. Nothing speaks to the crippling stupidity of a hormonal teenager than this. Akira Kurosawa is now my favorite director of all time, but whenever I sit down to see one of his movies, I must give pause for the shame that my introduction to Kurosawa was delayed by over 6 years because of Suzie... and I didn't even any heavy petting.

Fortunately, video allows me to make up for my past mistakes. Last weekend, I sat down to re-visit one of the longer, and better, of Kurosawa's films- Ran. Ran is Kurosawa's fantastic, Nobu-theater inspired adaptation of Shakespeare's King Lear. Instead of Lear having 3 daughters, Kurosawa presents us with three samurai sons. After 20 years of abysmal video transfers, Criterion has mercifully stepped in and restored Ran to all it's fantastic, colorific glory. Ran isn't my favorite of Kurosawa's films. I'm a big fan of his smaller stories, like Ikiru, Rashomon, Stray Dog and Dersu Uzala. Still, it's hard to not like watching a director at the top of his game and nobody can pull off a sweeping epic quite like Kurosawa. The film has an expressionistic sweep with bigger-than-life acting and fantastic composition. Like any great tragedy, it is a very long fall to the final comeuppance, but it's a hell of a ride along the way.

What I particularly love about this version is the audio commentary. Stephen Prince is a fantastic commentator and should be required viewing. I've heard his commentary on a couple other Criterion Collection releases and he does a fantastic job of flushing out some of the better details of Kurosawa's life, his philosophy and his technical style. Prince also does a tremendous job of flushing out the story and illuminating some of Kurosawa's brilliant details. You owe it to yourself to check this new copy out, even if you've seen it before. If you haven't... well, what were YOU doing in high school?