u/volumeofatorus

One of the ways people in the past feel alien to me is that it seems like they had far fewer moral qualms with non-defensive violence against others, especially if they were of a different region or religion.

This got me wondering whether my impression is accurate. Do we have any accounts of knights or soldiers (or others) in the middle ages expressing guilt or regret for violence they committed on campaigns? Or is the whole idea that a warrior would feel guilt or regret for killing or raping people on the other side of a conflict a completely modern one that wouldn't make sense to people in medieval times?

I know there have been questions about PTSD in the past, but I'm interested more in feelings of guilt and self-judgement. You could imagine someone not being traumatized (in the modern sense) by war but still feeling guilty for their actions.

I should say from the jump that I don't hate Ran, and in fact admire many things about it. Many of the shots have breathtaking composition, and the color palette in particular is incredible and makes some shots look like moving paintings. The battle for the third castle was intense and unlike anything I had seen on film before. The themes about loyalty and cycles of violence are thought-provoking and timeless. I appreciated the ambitious scope and especially the battle scenes that had hundreds of extras. Kurosawa demonstrated his skills as a filmmaker here.

Yet so much else about this film made me feel bored and detached, which surprised me as I've heard many people say this may well be one of the best movies ever made. I don't hate the movie, but I also don't love it either like so many others do.

Many scenes are shot from a static camera that moves little if at all, and often the camera in these scenes is positioned back away from the characters, making it feel at times more like a recording of a play than a movie. This was especially painful in indoor dialogue scenes, where I often felt the visuals hardly added anything. It made it more difficult to appreciate the acting when the camera was far away and I couldn't see the details of characters' faces, if their faces were even directly in the shot at all.

And then there's the characters. Taro and Jiro, the two oldest brothers, felt practically indistinguishable to me in terms of personality and motivation, and many of their scenes in particular felt very stiff and flat. The youngest brother, Saburo, is more interesting, and yet he is underutilized, and doesn't even appear much if at all in the second act. Kaede is perhaps one of the most interesting characters in terms of her plotting and motivation, and yet in many scenes she is also stiff and flat. I recognize this may in part be due to the culture of the feudal Japan setting, but nonetheless it still made me feel very detached in those moments. (To be fair, Hidetora and the fool were well done and I was genuinely interested in their characters and emotional journeys.)

There were also a lot of random advisors/generals/nobleman who I struggled to keep track of because they lacked defining traits.

To be blunt, it felt like Kurosawa sacrificed the multidimensionality of characters in order to use them as props for cool shots or to explore interesting themes.

I'm not someone who needs movies to be fast-paced to hold my attention. Two movies I watched recently that I really love are Sentimental Value and 2001: A Space Odyssey, both of which are slow burns. Something about many of the slower scenes in Ran in particular, and the overall pacing of the movie, didn't compel me.

Some scenes really wowed me, but then were followed by scenes that completely fell flat. The themes are really interesting to think about, yet while watching the movie I struggled to feel consistently invested and felt that parts of it dragged.

Given the intense and near universal praise I've seen for this movie, it makes me wonder if there's something I'm missing or don't get. I'm curious to hear others' perspectives.

Chris Hayes interviewed Ezra about AI and how the political system should interact with AI companies. Interestingly, Ezra was pretty dismissive of claims that superintelligence is near, and that instead we should focus on AI as it current exists. He said we should view it as something the government should have a say in, and that we need to focus on regulating its harms and ensuring it’s used to benefit society instead of just wealthy Silicon Valley investors.