Ran (1985) is Kurosawa's greatest formal achievement and the most expensive Japanese film ever made at the time of its production.

The film is adapted from King Lear but Kurosawa spent years developing the story before acknowledging the connection. His own version — an aging warlord who divides his domain among three sons — was based on a different Japanese historical legend, and the Lear parallel emerged from that independently.

What makes Ran formally extraordinary is how Kurosawa uses the landscape. The battles are filmed from a distance that removes them from heroism. You see columns of soldiers moving across plains the way you watch weather moving across a valley. The scale removes individual agency from the violence, which is the film's argument: history is not made by heroes but by forces that exceed individual comprehension.

The use of color — the three sons distinguished by red, yellow, and blue throughout the film — is a formalism that most directors would have considered too bold. In Ran it works because the film is already operating at the register of fable. The color coding isn't naturalistic because it doesn't need to be.