Ran (1985) 4K Restoration
Director: Akira Kurosawa Run Time: 162 min. Rating: R Release Year: 1985
Starring: Akira Terao, Daisuke Ryū, Jinpachi Nezu, Mieko Harada, Tatsuya Nakadai
Country: Japan, France
Language: Japanese
About the film:
Akira Kurosawa’s Academy Award-winning adaptation of William Shakespeare’s King Lear set in sixteenth-century Japan.
At the age of seventy, after years of consolidating his empire, the Great Lord Hidetora Ichimonji decides to abdicate and divide his domain amongst his three sons. However, he vastly underestimates how the new-found power will corrupt them and cause them to turn on each other…and him.
“This is one of the year’s major cinematic events. It’s well worth leaving the house for, should that opportunity arise.”
—Mike D’Angelo, AV Club
Thirty years after its original release, Studiocanal decided to restore Ran (1985) in 4K in collaboration with the Japanese company Kadokawa. In 1985, the production of the original film was possible thanks to a French-Japanese collaboration and 30 years later, Studiocanal and Kadokawa replicated this partnership to restore the film. Ran has been restored in 4K by the French laboratory Éclair, under Studiocanal’s supervision. Based on an original negative, the majority of the restoration work was done manually, image by image. Color grading was approved by Masaharu Ueda, one of Ran‘s three cinematographers and a close associate of Kurosawa’s.
About the filmmaker:
Akira Kurosawa was a Japanese filmmaker who is widely regarded as one of the greatest and most influential filmmakers in the history of cinema. He received international recognition after his feature film Rashomon (1950) won the Golden Lion at the 1951 Venice Film Festival and became the first Japanese film to win a major award at a western festival. He directed 30 feature films over five decades, including Ikiru (1952), Seven Samurai (1954), Throne of Blood (1957), The Hidden Fortress (1958), Yojimbo (1961), High and Low (1963), Kagemusha: The Shadow Warrior (1980), and Ran (1985). His work was celebrated at international film festivals and inspired and influenced filmmakers all over the world, including Takeshi Kitano, Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, George Lucas, John Woo and Zhang Yimou. Among other career honors, Kurosawa received the Academy Award for Lifetime Achievement.
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