“SPECTACULAR! Among the most thrilling movie experiences a viewer can have!”
– Terrence Rafferty, The New York Times (January 3, 2010)


[FIVE STARS- HIGHEST RATING]
“CRITICS' PICK! KUROSAWA'S MAGISTERIAL EPIC DEMANDS VIEWING ON THE BIG SCREEN!”
– Time Out New York
Click here to read entire review

“Kurosawa’s late-period masterpiece, transposing King Lear to period Japan, is one of the most exquisite spectacles ever made,
a color-coordinated epic tragedy of carnage and betrayal—passionate, somber, and profound.”
– New York magazine

“AWE INSPIRING! Takes its place among the major screen versions of Shakespeare.
The battle scenes are horrifying, yet extraordinarily beautiful.”
– Elliott Stein, The Village Voice

“The most intimate of epics or the most epic of chamber pieces.”
– The L Magazine
Click here to read entire review

“Spectacular... The wide-screen, color-coordinated battle scenes will blow your mind,
and must be seen in a theater. Don't ever think of watching Ran on a DVD or cellphone!”
– V.A. Musetto, New York Post

(1985) Literally, Chaos… Resting after a wild boar hunt among spectacular green mountainscapes, 16^th century daimyo Tatsuya Nakadai decides to divide his domain among his three sons, instructing them with a parable: individually, three arrows can easily be broken; together, they are strong. And then… A giant battle between color-coded armies is fought solely to the great Toru Takemitsu’s plaintive music, culminating in a single gunshot; an entire castle burns to the ground, as Nakadai’s glassy-eyed Lord Hidetora staggers down its steep stone steps; an ice-cold, knife-wielding seducer stops post-coitus to squash a moth (Mieko Harada's tour de force scene garnered laughter, cheers, and applause from hardened New York Film Festival audiences at the U.S. premiere); Hisashi Igawa’s plotter is so steeped in betrayal that, dared to switch sides, he cries, “Where could I go?;” a blind man teeters on the verge of a precipice he can only sense. A decade-long dream (he had storyboarded the entire film in his own watercolors), Kurosawa's adaptation of Shakespeare’s “King Lear” proved the master's flair for epic sweep and stylistic innovation undimmed at the age of 75. The culmination of his career — clarified Kurosawa, "I said culmination, not conclusion." Four Oscar nominations, including Best Director, Cinematography, and Art Direction, with Emi Wada winning for her dazzling, three-years-in-the-making costumes. Approx. 160 minutes
A RIALTO PICTURES RELEASE

• STORYBOARD WATERCOLORS BY KUROSAWA (for Ran & other films)
• RAN pressbook, (including production notes and biographies)
• TATSUYA NAKADAI CHARACTER GALLERY

25th anniversary poster illustrated by Keiko Kimura on sale exclusively at Film Forum Available at the concession. $25

“KUROSAWA'S SPECTACLE TO END ALL SWEEPING J-SPECTACLES! Like all of Kurosawa’s work,
the human pulse is what drives the drama. Only this time, it’s also the drumbeat of an elegy.”
– Time Out New York

“More than the brilliant set pieces (the first big battle scene, an orgy of bloodletting played in almost total silence)
or the stunning images (a single figure in a sea of grass and rock; a battalion on horseback galloping along the shore,
their herky-jerky movement the effect of shooting with an ultra-long lens), it’s the shapeliness of the whole that impresses,
as if Kurosawa had held the entire 160 minutes, like a painting, in his mind’s eye.”
– Amy Taubin, The Village Voice

“A Lear for our age, and for all time. The shift and sway of a nation divided is vast, the chaos terrible, the battle scenes the most ghastly ever filmed, and the outcome is even bleaker than Shakespeare’s. Indeed the only note of optimism resides in the nobility
of the film itself: a huge, tormented canvas, in which Kurosawa even contrives to command the elements to obey his vision.
The results are all that one could possibly dream of.”
– Time Out (London)

“A tragedy fed by Shakespeare, Noh, and the samurai epic… a film that shows human brutality, warfare,
and suffering as if from the eye of a dispassionate God, seated far above the world’s terror. …
a great metaphor of the apocalypse, a world in flames whose chaos is made strangely beautiful.”
– Michael Wilmington