“Ran”, or Shakespeare in Japanese
Abstract
Pointing to the plot similarities between Kurosawa’s film and Shakespeare’s tragedy, the author notes the original approach of the outstanding director to the play written for the theatre. What he has in mind is not the simple mingling of the Elizabethan theatre with the Japanese aesthetic tradition, but the way the source material was processed without the use of simple transpositions and illustrativeness. At the stylistic and narrative levels, references to the classical nö theatre, Kaidan – Stories and Studies of Strange Things, and folk myths and legends, especially the use of animal metaphors, characterising the protagonists both in Shakespeare’s drama, and in Kurosawa’s film play an important role in Ran. The last interpretative trope which Loska notes is the presence of religious references, particularly visible in references to the Buddhist tradition, which lightens the pessimistic message of the work.
Keywords:
Akira Kurosawa, William Shakespeare, nō, kaidan, Japanese cinemaReferences
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Authors
Krzysztof Loskakwartalnik.filmowy@ispan.pl
Jagiellonian University Poland
Profesor Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego, dyrektor Instytutu Sztuk Audiowizualnych tamże; zajmuje się filmem japońskim i kulturą współczesną; autor ponad stu publikacji naukowych, w tym jedenastu książek, m.in.: Dziedzictwo McLuhana. Między nowoczesnością a ponowoczesnością (2001), Hitchcock – autor wśród gatunków (2002), David Cronenberg: rozpad ciała, rozpad gatunku (2003, wspólnie z Andrzejem Pitrusem), Encyklopedia filmu science fiction (2004), Tożsamość i media. O filmach Atoma Egoyana (2006), Poetyka filmu japońskiego (2009), Kenji Mizoguchi i wyobraźnia melodramatyczna (2012), Nowy film japoński (2013).
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