It's must be hard to find a movie that talks about more themes than this one, maybe LOTR: The Return of the King, and that is a MOVIE with capital letters, of course, from a Shakespeare adaptation one could expect great themes, but the thing is that adaptations don't always live up to the original, I haven't read The King Lear, but for what I know, it's a great inspection of human nature, and this movie really does this well enough.
The thing is that this movie is very well done, the tecnical aspects couldn't be better, the cinematography is glorious, the acting is excellent and realistic, the music is there where and when it needs to be, the action scenes are well filmed, and of course, the themes of the movie are very rich and well exposed.
Of course the movie teaches us how power corrupts a person and can turn him or her against everyone, even his or her family, and that would be a good theme, but the movie goes far beyond that, because Lady Kaede, the arquitect of the Ichimonji's house disaster, does everything to avenge his family who was murdered by Hidetora himself, this is interesting because the protagonist is by no means a "hero" or a "good guy", he is a war lord, and his actions are the ones chasing him, this is more clear when Buda is directly mentioned, for what I understand, karma works, sort of, this way: when you do something, it has an impact in the world, and this impact would either be good or bad acording to your action, and this effect will eventually return at you, and this movie show us how that happens to him, also because of the trauma of the betreyal of his sons and the age, Hidetora became insane and the only son who loves him and can cure his madness is now exilled because he was being "rude", that's explained by Kyoami with the bird and snake metaphor.
In the end the family destroyed itself, the power and greed of two of the sons became enough to cause a great chaos, but the horrible actions Hidetora did in the past increased this tragedy, and the tragedy of humanity itself, we can't stop fighting with each other, that's why this movie is very human, it's a movie about our species, and one of the things that make us so special: using cruelty to achive power.
Also a great detail the branch scene in the begining, that clearly shows that Saburo was the only son that cared for his father, we learned that through cinematographic language, Lord Hidetora Ichimonji learned it the hard way...
The thing is that this movie is very well done, the tecnical aspects couldn't be better, the cinematography is glorious, the acting is excellent and realistic, the music is there where and when it needs to be, the action scenes are well filmed, and of course, the themes of the movie are very rich and well exposed.
Of course the movie teaches us how power corrupts a person and can turn him or her against everyone, even his or her family, and that would be a good theme, but the movie goes far beyond that, because Lady Kaede, the arquitect of the Ichimonji's house disaster, does everything to avenge his family who was murdered by Hidetora himself, this is interesting because the protagonist is by no means a "hero" or a "good guy", he is a war lord, and his actions are the ones chasing him, this is more clear when Buda is directly mentioned, for what I understand, karma works, sort of, this way: when you do something, it has an impact in the world, and this impact would either be good or bad acording to your action, and this effect will eventually return at you, and this movie show us how that happens to him, also because of the trauma of the betreyal of his sons and the age, Hidetora became insane and the only son who loves him and can cure his madness is now exilled because he was being "rude", that's explained by Kyoami with the bird and snake metaphor.
In the end the family destroyed itself, the power and greed of two of the sons became enough to cause a great chaos, but the horrible actions Hidetora did in the past increased this tragedy, and the tragedy of humanity itself, we can't stop fighting with each other, that's why this movie is very human, it's a movie about our species, and one of the things that make us so special: using cruelty to achive power.
Also a great detail the branch scene in the begining, that clearly shows that Saburo was the only son that cared for his father, we learned that through cinematographic language, Lord Hidetora Ichimonji learned it the hard way...