Rashomon (1951) (Not Rated)

Rashomon (1951) (Not Rated)

Directed by Akira Kurosawa

Starring: Toshiro Mifune, Masayuki Mori, Machiko Kyo, Takashi Shimura

Daddy Says:

Marge: You liked Rashomon!

Homer: That's not how I remember it.

When The Simpsons can reference a foreign language film and be pretty sure that their audience will understand the reference, that film has almost assuredly entered the mainstream consciousness.

 Rashomon, a wonderful movie by acclaimed director Akira Kurosawa, begins with three men meeting under a gate in a pouring rainstorm. Two of them seem distressed, and depressed, prompting the third to ask what's bothering them. They tell a story, which we see in flashback, of a murder trial. The facts are a man and his bride were travelling through a forest, when they came across the path of a bandit. The bandit lured the husband deeper into the woods with the promise of cheap weapons for sale, but attacks him and binds the husband to a tree. He then brings the bride to see what he has done, and rapes her in front of her husband. Later, the husband is found dead by a woodcutter wandering through the forest.

The rest is unclear because each person tells a different story. The bandit claims to have seduced the bride, who succumbed to his charm, dueled mightily with the husband and killed him after the fight. The bride says the bandit left after raping her, and her husband looked at her with loathing in his eyes. She fainted and awoke to find him dead. Through the use of a medium we are able to hear the dead husband's story, which claims that the bandit fell in love with his wife after the attack. She agreed to go with him, but first he had to kill her husband. The bandit was disgusted by this display, and offered to kill her instead. She ran off with the bandit in pursuit. The husband says he killed himself.

Later, we find out the woodcutter actually saw the whole thing, his story claiming that the wife goaded the two men into fighting over which one she would end up with. They were reluctant to fight, the battle far different from the epic sword fight we see during the bandit's story, but with the same result of the bandit killing the husband. But as we find out, the woodcutter has reason to lie as well.

However, as a viewer we must realize that what we see may not be the truth either. The first level, the men at the gate in the rain, is factual. But the trial is told from their perspectives, so some of it may be distorted or parts left out. Then the scenes we see from the forest during their narratives are the most distorted, because these are being heard by us through two separate filters: the person telling the story in the trial is now being related to us third-hand by the other men at the gate.

Rashomon is a fascinating study on the truth and what it really means. Each person's story is designed to show them in their own best light, leaving out or changing the parts that they don't like, or that show them in a less than admirable area. If you've never seen it before, you've probably already absorbed its meaning through popular culture. You owe it to yourself to see the original.

Rating for Rashomon: *****.

Daughter Says:

You’d think I wouldn’t like this movie because it has so many things I would usually hate about it. It’s a black and white, foreign film without a clear ending. It’s outrageous.

But Rashomon wasn’t that upsetting. It just proves how really screwed up people can get when telling a story. No one really wants to tell the pathetic truth. Instead they would rather tell a huge lie to make themselves look better. It gives the viewer a major reality check.

There are a few things I did have a problem with. I didn’t really get the ending. The baby didn’t make much since other than to show how cruel desperate people can be. But other than that this film was interesting. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a movie that tells that kind of story. The closest movie I’ve seen to this one would have to be Hero, but even that has the truth of the story in it. This one doesn’t have the truth in it at all. They never quite make it clear what really happened that day.

I don’t usually care for black and white movies unless they’re filmed like Citizen Kane or The Third Man or even The 400 Blows because I enjoy watching the details around the characters, which most black and white films don’t accentuate. Even though this film wasn’t very artsy I think the black and white part helped it a lot. I think when the characters are telling their sides of the story it makes sense because a story is usually told in a 2D format. So that part helped, but they probably could have added color in the reality part. It would have made a lot of sense there, or maybe they just didn’t have color back then. But either way the cinematography didn’t really bother me all that much.

Rating for Rashomon: ***1/2.