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The Tragic Genre from Classical to Contemporary: King Lear and Ran
PERIODS 11-12
RATIONALE : There are many issues that must be addressed once we have decided to analyse a Shakespearean play and its film derivatives. What films do we choose? Why? How do we judge them? How do we compare them to the text, to one another? Can we? Should we? What others have said about these films? In the following section we hope to address these questions, provide the most complete answers we can, and discuss some of the characteristics and attributes of the film we have selected.
The Problems
How do we evaluate films that are considered adaptations or derivatives of a Shakespearean play? On one hand few critics now believe that representations can be vehicles for universal truths divorced from the time and culture that created them; on the other hand to judge a film based on a Shakespeare play according to how closely or how well it adheres to the (presumed) Shakespeare text is to invoke a criterion implicitly dependent on a referent no longer there. However, to ignore the original text and to not only allow but encourage the proliferation of derivatives is a now "[...] a focus for scholarly panic, the fear that adapting Shakespeare for the mass media, - worse for the mass audience - meant the violation of perfect texts" (Lynda E. Boose, Richard Burt, editors of Shakespeare the Movie ). So, what we must then do is decide how the film is affected by the culture that created it, and simultaneously compare and ignore the play it is based upon.
Why King Lear?
First, the story of King Lear and his daughters encompasses many of the universal themes that make a work timeless:complex characters, contests, love, betrayal, insanity, redemption, murder and vengeance. Second, there are many films to choose from, all varying in genre, culture, and recency. The Tragedy of King Lear as written by Shakespeare is an engaging piece of literature. But he was not the first person to tell the tale of King Lear and his kingdom, and he certainly will not be the last. One can find earlier versions of the Lear story in Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene , Raphael Holinshed's Chronicles , John Higgins's The Mirror for Magistrates , Geoffrey of Monmouth's History and The True Chronicle History of King Leir , an anonymous play of Shakespeare's own time. Post-Shakespeare versions include Nahum Tate's adaptation entitled King Lear , along with the more recent revisions such as Edward Bond's Lear , Akira Kurosawa's Ran , Gordon Bottomley's King Lear's Wife and A Thousand Acres . Shakespeare himself has been linked to more than just one single Lear as evidenced by the ongoing dispute concerning the quarto text versus the folio. The point is that there are many Lears, and though one is more famous than the others, each is a version that works from prior texts. In other words, Shakespeare's successors are doing what Shakespeare did in the early 1600s: retelling a story about Lear that others before them have already told.
For these reasons we believe that this project is justified in its assertion that modern derivatives of King Lear are a valuable part of understanding the story and its cultural significance.
Why RAN?
Ran is a King Lear for and of the eighties, when the world seemed poised on the brink of nuclear destruction. Although it is set in the age of the Country at War, the film is a commentary on the twentieth century: the decay of culture, the loss of humanity and the disproportionate destruction that can be loosed if we were to make a mistake and a nuclear holocaust ensued. Accordingly, major segments of the film are devoted to battle sequences. Some critics saw in RAN a chronicle history in the Shakespearean sense, epic in scope. Kurosawa further complicated this issue when he explained that its initial inspiration came not from The Tragedy of King Lear, but the Japanese warlord Motonari Mori (1497-1571) and his three sons. In Japan Motonari is legendary as the source of the parable that Great Lord Hidetora tells his three sons of the three arrows that may be broken when they are separated but not when they are together. Whatever the initial source for RAN, the themes of apportionment, patriarchy, love, betrayal, murder and vengeance that it shares with Shakespeare's King Lear are unmistakable. The themes are there, the connection is there, but in RAN the most common variation is one of displacement. In it Kurosawa picks up Shakespeare's vein of polite cruelty and shows it in other situations. Often a Shakespearean feature is displaced from one character to another. Jiro, the legitimate second son, feels Edmund the bastard's envy for his older brother's primacy. Lear's crown of weeds becomes the straw hat that Kyoami, the jester, presents to mad Hidetora, with lilies for plumes. It is Hidetora who gouges out the eyes of an enemy. Where Gloucester leapt from an imaginary cliff, Hidetora actually jumps from a high wall and lies as if dead at the bottom.
Although it may be confusing to identify the similarities of RAN and The Tragedy of King Lear, one of the most valuable outcomes from attempting to do so, is the increased awareness of Japanese cinema and Japanese culture, especially because, for all his concern with the viewer, Kurosawa seems plagued with misunderstanding, especially by Japanese critics. He is accused of being "Western" and "un-Japanese" and has enjoyed only a mixed acceptance by the Japanese public. Reacting to such criticism, he once told "I hear a lot about foreigners being able to understand my pictures so well, but I certainly never thought of them while I was making the films. Perhaps it is because I am making films for today's young Japanese that I should find a Western-looking format the more practical...I really only make pictures for people in their twenties. They don't know anything about Japan or Japaneseness, not really".
One way that a modern audience can begin to understand the "Japaneseness" that Kurosawa is referring to is by already understanding the story within the film. If a viewer is familiar with the Lear story, they are able to identify similar themes in RAN, and once the viewer feels comfortable with their understanding of the plot, they are able to observe the aspects of the film that make it different, unique, and an exempla of Japanese cinema.
The themes
Of several possible themes connecting these historical dramas to the personal concerns of students is the timeless and transcultural tragedy of the destruction of a family. The heritage of a father’s past sins corrupts the relationships between family members, finally pitting sons against their father and brothers against each other. Other themes involved are betrayal and loyalty, vengeance and forgiveness, appearance and reality, and the nature of tragedy in the human condition.
The story
Although Kurosawa used Shakespeare's King Lear as a source for his film, his goal was to create a film morality play, one which combined the traditional Shakespearean tragedy and Japanese Noh drama in an artistic vision of the condition of modern man. Kurosawa's Lear, the war lord Hidetora Ichimonji, is an old ruler who wants to leave behind the years of violence and bloodshed in his ruthless struggles for regional power. Now he wants peace,and to divide his land and power between his three sons while retaining his title and dignity of position. But, as in King Lear , the father's mistake is to connect the division with the love each child claims to have for the father. The two oldest profess their boundless love and duty to their father while the youngest incurs the wrath of the father by refusing to play the game, refusing to exaggerate and lie. Both Shakespeare's and Kurosawa's fathers are blind to the inner nature of love. They equate words and appearances with truth and reality, banishing the seemingly ungrateful, unloving youngest. That is the beginning of both tragedies.
The important difference between these two works are not in the Western or Japanese settings or in the changes in plot and characters but rather in the aesthetic of the artistic medium and in the religious-spiritual context of each work.
First, the artistic medium of Shakespeare's work is primarily the art of language and character. Tracing down the sources of almost anyone of his thirty-six plays, one finds strong "borrowings" from other earlier plays or histories. Yet translated into Shakespeare's language and dramatic form, these earlier flat works take on new dimensions in the power of poetic language and the psychological complexity of living characters. On any stage, in any interpretation, historical or modern, tha language and characters emerge as Shakespearean.
For Kurosawa the artistic medium is the camera and image. The language still moves and shapes the plot and theme, but it is the metaphorical quality of the image, scene, and finally the choreography of the entire work that the artistic achievement and meaning emerge. We must study images and visual patterns or motifs in the same way we examine the language text of Shakespeare.
Secondly, the religious-spiritual context: Shakespeare's world is that of the Judeo-Christian tradition, a monotheistic universe in which a benevolent God watches over the drama of man. The plays were written to be performed in the Globe Theatre, on a stage which symbolically placed man between heaven and hell. In the drama, the words become flesh and characters. Those characters are both symbolic and real. When Lear emerges from prison weeping with the body of Cordelia in his arms, we are meant to cry, to cry at the frailty of human beings, of actions, words, hopes.
Kurosawa's world overlays this tradition on the Shinto-Buddhist traditions of Japanese culture. His film is created to play on the screens of the world, visually one language, in many sub-titles. The images are of life; the characters, their emotions, their blood, all vivid, real. Yet there is a sense of distance not present in the Shakespearean experience. It is as if we are viewing these people and their world from an emotional distance. The camera an the stylized acting contribute to this distance. But so also does the Buddhistic outlook. In the tragic conclusion, the Fool will question, "Are there no gods, no Buddha?" He will shake his fist at the heavens and say, "If you exist, hear me! You are...cruel...Is it such fun to see a man weep?" And the faithful, wise Tango will reply, "It is the gods who weep...Don't cry. It's how the world is made. Men prefer sorrow over joy, suffering over peace." One of the final images will be a scroll image of the Amida Buddha. This is tragedy viewed from a Buddhist perspective, one in which the emotions of man are a result of his continued attachment to the illusions of this world. We are not meant to purge ourselves with tears and return to the every day drama of life. Rather we are asked to reflect on the condition of man and the meaning of his life. The tears of RAN are inner tears of awareness and compassion.
AIM: to help students appreciate different versions of the play and recognise the universality and timelessness of Shakespeare’s drama.
PROCEDURE : Once students are familiar with the plot and characters of King Lear (through the text and use of one of the various film-video versions of the play) they can compare and contrast selected scenes from Ran . The three following segments can be shown and discussed in two periods.
1.the opening: Hidetora’s decision to divide the land and power amongst his three sons and his banishment of the youngest (minutes 9-21)
2.the middle: Hidetora’s defeat and madness (minutes 54-75, from where he learns of youngest son’s love and loyalty through the brutal carnage of the attack on the castle by the two disloyal sons, ending with the father’s bewildered lapse into madness as he wanders from the burning castle, a total of 21 minutes. If a comparison of Shakespeare’s and Kurosawa’s “heath” scenes is desired, the next ten minutes of the film can be included.
3.the ending: (minutes 135-160) in which the two armies clash and the youngest son is reunited with his father in the tragic conclusion.
Classroom task
1. Divide the class into four groups.
2. Introduce the film and hand out a sheet of points to consider while watching RAN (5 min.)
3. Watch the sequences of RAN (70 min. + 15 min. for note taking - five minutes at the end of each sequence)
4. After watching the adaptation, each group will make a presentation detailing to what extent Shakespeare's story has been successfully transplanted to 16th-century Japan.(10 min.)
1 - WHILE WATCHING ACTIVITY (90 min.)
Points to consider when watching "Ran"
HIDETORA
1. What impression are we given of Hidetora at first? Does it change during the scene?
2. How infirm is Hidetora? What is his age?
3. What kind of lord is Hidetora? Autocratic? Terrifying? How do we know that he is a lord? Does he have majesty? Is he a lord in ruins?
4. What is Hidetora's mood as he outlines the 'love-test'?
5. What kind of father is Hidetora?
6. Does Hidetora treat each of his sons differently?
7. Do we have sympathy with Hidetora?
HIDETORA'S SONS
1. What is your first impression of each of Hidetora's sons?
2. What are their attitude to their father?
3. Do the sons kneel at any point or prostrate themselves? What does this tell of their character?
4. How does Hidetora respond to his sons' words?
STAGING
1. What is the space like - how is Hidetora's 'court' envisaged? What kind of world does Hidetora inhabit?
2. How are Hidetora and his sons introduced?
3. Was there much movement?
4. Who looks at whom and when? Is there eye contact?
5. Did characters make physical contact?
6. Any display of affection between characters?
7. Use of hand gestures?
8. What emotions were on display in the scene?
9. Did anything unexpected happen?
10. Was there laughter, humour or comedy in the scene?
CAMERA WORK
1. How are shots framed? How many characters are included in each shot?
2. Discuss camera angles and shots (close ups? Long shots? From above? From below? Particularly unusual camera angles?
3. Which film techniques were used (e.g. voice overs)?
SET/DESIGN/PROPS/LIGHTING/COSTUME
1. Describe the world Hidetora inhabits. Is it ancient? Recognisable? Non-specific?
2. Is there any furniture? (tables, chairs, thrones)?
3. Are there props? (weapons)?
4. How is the scene lit? (Candles? Torches? Natural light?)
5. Is there a coronet? If so, what does it look like?
6. What do the costumes suggest about character, the play, the world of the play?
MUSIC/SOUND EFFECTS/VOICE
1. If there is music, which instruments were used to convey what mood or atmosphere?
2. If there is a notable absence of music or sound effects, what effect does this have on the scene?
3. Tone of voice? Are people free to speak loudly/clearly? Is there shouting in the scene? Do people whisper?
2 - AFTER WATCHING ACTIVITY (10 min)
CLASS DISCUSSION
1. How much of Shakespeare's story was left in tact?
2. How successfully did the story transfer to a totally different setting?
3. How can this film add to our understanding and appreciation of King Lear ?
10/11
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