[REVIEWS RAN. Written and directed by Akira Kurosawa. Starring Tatsuya Nakadai. Japan, 1985. In Japanese with English subtitles. Opens at the Park Theatre, Vancouver, Dec. 20. One film which stood out in this year’s New York Film Festival, both for its sub- ject and the artistic genius of its film- again since the beginning of time.” It was Kurosawa’s 1951 film Rashomon that first brought Japanese cinema worldwide attention and acclaim. Kuros- awa’s interest in Russian literature inspired his subsequent Japanese movie versions of Dostoevsky’s The Idiot and Maxim Gorky’s The Lower Depths. In 1975, Kurosawa was invited to the Soviet Union to film Dersu Uzala, the story of an Asian tribesman and his friendship with a young Russian surveyor in the Siberian wilderness, a production which went on to win both the Grand Prize at the Moscow Film Festival and the U.S. Academy Award for best foreign film that year. A truly international filmmaker in terms of the scope of his subjects, the makers, is Ran, a fiery and furious epic denunciation of war, and the tragedy of men who “kill each other over and over A. Kurosawa’s epic denunciation of war depth of meaning and feeling, and the lush and vibrant intensity of style, Kurosawa, the son of a military officer, spent 10 years Struggling to conceive and realize Ran, (which translates as “chaos” or “turmoil’’) a film that would express through its fierce imagery the devastation and absurdity of war. Focusing on the events of the civil wars in 16th century Japan, and in particu- lar, on the saga of Morika, a powerful and ruthless warlord, Kurosawa effortlessly blends Japanese legend with elements from King Lear and aspects of Classical Noh drama. We see it especially with the “shiwajo,” whom the warlord comes to symbolize later in the film, an old- man who is transformed into a ghost and forced to wander the earth as punishment for his evil life. In the story, an aging warlord, Hide- tora, decides to transfer his duties to his sons after attaining absolute control over a long warring and volatile demain. The peace that prevails, however, is a false one that Hidetora has inflicted in ruthless and diabolical ways, establishing loyalty out of fearful obedience rather than through respect and trust. Soon new civil wars are unleashed, and even Hidetora’s sons turn against him and each other. His children \ LT es are “products of this age, weaned on strife and chaos, barren of loyalty and feeling.” The sons are symbols of the greater poten- tial bonds uniting humanity, bonds that are useless if rooted in fear rather than affection and devotion. Hidetora, stagger- ing among the flames and shrieks of war in Scenes that assault and jar the senses with images of battle and carnage, is driven into madness, but one that brings with it a painful new. vision of life. TATSUYA NAKADAI in a scene from Ran, directed by A. Kurosawa f f k i ( f & Kurosawa, who spoke about the film and its implications at a press conference | following a screening of Ran, remarked, f “Many people. who have seen the film | have accused me of a certain pessimism, | but this is not true. I believe it is necessary to confront desperation. With pessimism, I you cannot see beyond the desperation. | But if you look desperation in the face, you can see the hope that lies beyond it.” | — Prairie | Music that’s on an alternative track — Billy Bragg Between The Wars. Go Discs AGO EP-1. Dick Gaughan A Different Kind of Love Song. Celtic Music CM-017. Charlie Haden The Ballad of the Fallen. ECM 23794. Lost in the Stars: The Music of Kurt Weill. A&M SP95104. Describing his recent tour of Japan to the British music press, Billy Bragg referred to the Japanese proverb: “The nail that sticks up gets hammered down.” He need not have added that this ancient wisdom is, as far as the pop music business is concerned, one of those truths held to be self-evident. In an industry dominated by monopo- lies, the pressure is for musicians to conform to whatever accepted standards currently prevail. There are formulas for the produc- tion and distribution of the “product” and - 7 For peace on earth @ For good health ® For jobs and prosperity @ This is our wish to our members and supporters and all working people for 1986. Workers’ Benevolent Assoc. District Committee 805 East Pender Street in order to achieve some measure of “‘suc- cess” one needs to adhere fairly closely to them. Media moguls and diverse highly-placed opinion makers and shakers tell us that we get what we want. However, without some real and sustained exposure to alternatives, it is difficult to want anything other than what you are given. Careful scrutiny of play- lists and the album charts reveals, for the most part, a depressing blandness and uni- formity. Billy Bragg is a young East-end Lon- doner with working-class smarts. His recorded output to date consists of two albums and a handful of-singles. His lyrics are rapier-sharp jabs at the anti-worker, anti-human policies of the Thatcher government. His most recent release is an extended play record with four songs. “Between the Wars” looks at peace and security in Britain under the Iron Lady. In “Which Side Are You On” Bragg updates the old union clas- sic with references to the British miners’ strike. Ownership and control of the press is the issue on “It Says Here.” “Could it be an infringement of the freedom of the press/ to print pictures of women in states of undress?” he asks. Bragg’s witty, concise, and well-aimed songs are delivered in heavily-accented tones to the accompaniment, for the most part, of a solitary electric guitar. They’re stark but melodic and effective. Effective is also the word to describe and Branch 33 _ 24@e PACIFIC TRIBUNE, DECEMBER 18, 1985 Scots singer-songwriter Dick Gaughan. The perennial favorite of the commercially inconspicuous British folk scene, Gaughan is a former plumber from the ship-building area of Leith in Edinburgh. A member of the Communist Party in Britain and a vete- ran performer with several albums to his Records credit, he has recently recorded his most overtly political work to date. The title cut,.“‘A Different Kind of Love Song” deals with the supposed dichotomy between music’s functions of “entertaining” and “enlightening”. The overriding theme of this album is Gaughan’s commitment to the struggle for a peaceful future. This is evident most particularly in “Think Again” where he questions whether the Soviets want war and weighs the evidence to the contrary. His songs are both tributes to action as well as calls to action. “Peace won’t come by words alone,” he sings in “Prisoner 452”, a song about a Nazi concentration camp. In Ewan MacColl’s “Father’s Song”, Gaughan is both tender and frank with his sleepless son. The song contains the wonderful line “there’s no ogres, wicked witches/ only greedy sons of bitches/waiting to exploit your life away.” Possessing a powerful voice and a com- mand of the guitar that is the envy of many of his contemporaries, he is equally striking in singing traditional pieces, compositions of contemporaries, or his own songs. For me, one of the highlights of jazz releases in the last few years is Charlie Had- en’s “Ballad of the Fallen.” The great jazz bassist first made his name with the Ornett Coleman quartet in the late 1950s. He has since played with a large number of musi- cians, including Keith Jarrett. Haden’s compositions include “Songs for Che” with the Liberation Music Orchestra as well as Works ranging from interpretations of Spanish Civil War songs and Bertolt Brecht compositions, to topical pieces for cam- paigns and struggles in the 60s and ’70s. In addition to several songs from Spanish Civil War, this album includes a musical combination of a poem found on the ~ body of an El Salvadoran resistance fighter _ and the tune played on Portugese radio to — signal to the young enlisted army officers to. revolt against the fascist Portugese govern: ment in 1974. Haden also does a stirrin version of the Chilean anthem of resistance “The People United Will Never B : Defeated” and a tribute to the Spanish — Communist leader Dolores Ibarruri. 3 The 12 players in Haden’s ensemble find — room to stretch out but still make some — very accessible music that is both dynamic — and passionate, 4 In refusing to acknowledge the difference — between “serious music” and “light music” German composer Kurt Weill said there only good music and bad music. On Lost in the Stars, 16 diverse artists pay tribute to the unique and eclectic music of Kurt Weill. Musical barriers are freely crossed with delightful results. Pop luminaries such as Sting, Mariann Faithfull, Lou Reed and Tom Wai together with a string quartet and jazz m cians Carla Bley, Phil Woods, Charlie Haden and Sharon Freeman have each lent their own interpretation to. a wide body of Weill’s work, ranging from his early collab- . rations with Bertolt Brecht to Broadway hits composed in America, where he died in 1950. we Weill was a Jewish composer who fled Hitler’s Germany the night before the Ges- tapo kicked down his door. He is perha best known in popular music circles, if at all, for his “Mac the Knife” from the “Three- penny Opera” written with Bertolt Brecht. Everyone from Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald and Bobby Darin has hadabash _ at this one. Nine of the 16 tracks on album are Brecht-Weeill collaborations. The work of Weill and Brecht, whil harsh, cynical and disillusioned, is yet ho ful. It paints a grim reality but not one tl is unchangeable. soe Each of these records leaves us with the message that with respect to pop music broadly conceived, the medium need not! tedium. sa — Tim Firth