It’s very difficult for me to retain a sanguine outlook on life under such circumstances.” Thus Kurosawa chose the civil wars of sixteenth-century Japan as the setting for Ran so that he could criticize today’s technological progresses and wars. Kurosawa has also stated, “All the technological progresses of these last years has only taught human beings how to kill more of each other faster.
Kurosawa once expressed his feeling that “If you look at the situation of the world around you, I think it’s impossible in this day and age to be optimistic.” The darkness and violence of Ran reflect his pessimistic outlook. He also did this in Throne of Blood, Yojimbo and other films. In Ran, Kurosawa again uses the history of the past to comment on the present state of things.
In 1957, Kurosawa’s classic film Throne of Blood similarly retold Shakespeare’s Macbeth in a medieval Japanese setting. It was not the master’s first attempt at adapting Shakespeare. Akira Kurosawa’s 1985 epic, Ran, retells Shakespeare’s King Lear, setting it in sixteenth-century Japan.