225. Rashomon (1950)

Directed By Akira Kurosawa

Synopsis

Three men meet under the ruined Rashomon gate and discuss the facts of a murder/rape case that has been presented to the authorities in three different versions. Further on we realise that one of the men witnessed the situation and he relates his own version of events. All of the stories serve a particular agenda.

Review

Few films give you so much food for thought as this one, making it one of the most original films on the list. Firstly its non-linear narrative structure is something very new in cinema and then its implications to the whole concept of fact and fiction are equally interesting.

The film is, of course, a work of fiction, but it seems to show itself openly as a lie here, much like the lies perpetrated by all the narrators of the film. If there is anything wrong with the film it is that it doesn't work as well on screen as it does later in your head. The film has some amazing flourishes, like the fluid camera movements and moments like the medium speaking through the voice of the dead man, but the way the film works it's way into your thoughts is actually the great strength of it.

The perspective on human nature granted by this film is not a comfortable one, everyone acts on their own self interest, and even if there is some redemption in the end, we always end up not knowing what is the actual truth of the film. The woodcutter's narrative seems to be the most truthful, as he is the one with less to gain in distorting events. Nevertheless we learn that even he is hiding the fact that he acted in his self-interest in order to rob the dead man of a precious dagger, casting doubt on his own narrative. This is a film that opens a can of worms in what concerns the reliability of any narrator, including the film's narrator. An impressive masterpiece with wide-ranging repercussions on the whole medium until today. Essential viewing.

Final Grade

10/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

The film won a Golden Lion Award at the 1951 Venice Film Festival, and is widely credited to have introduced both Kurosawa and Japanese cinema to Western audiences. The film pioneered several cinematographic techniques, such as shooting directly into the sun and using mirrors to reflect sunlight onto the actor's faces. The film is also notable as an instance in which the camera "acts" or plays an active and important role in the story or its symbolism.

The film's concept has influenced an extensive variety of subsequent works, such as the films Vantage Point, "Virumaandi" Courage Under Fire, The Usual Suspects, One Night at McCool's, Basic and Hoodwinked, the television series Boomtown and episodes of television programs such as Star Trek: The Next Generation, A Different World, CSI, My Name Is Earl, Veronica Mars, Good Times, The X-Files, Happy Days, Carter Country, and Farscape. An episode of Dexter's Laboratory even mimicked the wooded glen for its background. The first act of Michael John LaChiusa's musical, See What I Wanna See, is also based on the same short stories by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, and features a main character who goes to a theater to see Rashomon. The 1964 western movie The Outrage, which starred Paul Newman, Claire Bloom and Edward G. Robinson, was a remake of Rashomon. The movie Hero has also been compared to Rashomon.

In the film Inside the Edges, German filmmaker Werner Herzog said that Rashomon is the closest to "perfect" a film can get.

In Taiwan, press used to refer to a case in which each party involved is having different versions of what actually took place (ex. a crime or a meeting between politicians) as "a Rashomon".


No good excerpts of the film on Youtube so here's Werner Herzog speaking about Rashomon: