I just watched the DVD of Ran, Akira Kurosawa’s epic reimagining of Shakespeare’s King Lear. It occured to me (between marvelling at Kurosawa’s crystal-clear storytelling, epic staging, beautifully defined characters and jaw-dropping art direction and cinematography) that for the average western audience, the Orient is pretty close to being an fantasy environment. No coincidence, then, that so many western science fiction and fantasy movies have plundered Asian culture for their production design. You see Samurai motifs in Star Wars (the stormtrooper costumes, for instance) and in the spacesuits worn by the crew of the Nostromo in Alien. Joss Whedon’s American/Chinese cultural mash-up lends his Firefly universe just the right touch of otherworldly charm.
Watching Ran, I found myself enjoying it on the same level I might enjoy a good fantasy story. The parallels are many: it’s set in a simplified feudal society of warlords, where family and honour are top of the agenda. Archetypal characters struggle against the whims of fate in a stylised world of castles and hostile landscapes. There are big battles between huge armies waving colour-coded banners to denote their allegiance. I’m a simple boy from Somerset, so it all conspires to make medieval Japan look foreign, familiar and as seductive as all hell.
Graham Edwards 