Rashomon (1950)

Akira Kurosawa has directed some of the great cinematic works in the medium. Ikiru (1952) and the Seven Samurai (1954) are often hailed as masterpieces, and his samurai adaptations of Shakespeare's plays (namely Throne of Blood [1957] and Ran [1985]) are incredible, visceral movie-going experiences. Be that as it may, I was pretty dismissive the first time I watched Rashomon (1950), some five - six years ago. Part of my 'rejection' was due to the excessively dramatic performances of the cast--save for the storytellers who wander the long-dead atavistic ruins of some former empire like men lost in a state of perpetual fog, or bad dream--and the booming, abrasive soundtrack. Yes, Rashomon seems rather stage-y and theatrical; in fact, the plot's set-up, where each captive or witness confesses their version of events to an unseen authority, could have played just as well to an open forum of theater attendees. We become the focus of the witness's pleas, the source of their confession. I believe that this technique is intentional--Kurosawa's admiration of Shakespeare should serve as enough proof. More interestingly, Rashomon employs the literary technique of the unreliable narrator in a way that, if not pioneering (I can't at this moment think of an earlier auteur of this process in filmmaking, but one may exist), is certainly used more tremendously and is more inspiring--think of Bryan Singer's the Usual Suspects (1995) and what that narrative stood to gain from movies like Rashomon--than some of the written efforts from which it is derived. The viewer is meant to question everything: purpose, motive, their own inflections upon particular characters based on how they might have acted in similar situations. The set-up is simple. A man is dead in the forest and there are two witnesses/suspects - one a bandit, the other the dead man's wife. What transpired? The answer plumbs the depths of the human condition and intriguingly delves into social issues that were years from breaking the fleshy celluloid surface. The wife's speech in the fourth confession about what it truly means to be a women in society is a condemnation on the contradictory patriarchal rule that makes her a captive, a possession, is certainly an earlier, albeit brief, precursor to the argument of feminism in motion pictures. Beyond the story, there are some beautiful examples of camera work that pulsate this film: the wife illuminated by a ray of sun in the utter dark of the woods, the spinning glimpses of the forest canopy while she is being attacked/raped, the ruins where the story-tellers speak in hushed misery ravaged with torrential rain, and the wonderfully edited sequence in the third confession where the husband is portrayed committing his own murder flashing back to the medium conjuring his words as both fall slowly to the ground - one in the forest, days past, the other on the 'stage' before our eyes. The twist of course is that every storyteller is unreliable - but every storyteller also reveals something of themselves in their false confession. The dead man's confession is one of denial, the wife - one of blame and torment, and the bandit's false admittance is one of pride. "I didn't want to get involved," speaks the storyteller who stumbled upon the man's body in the beginning and with these words we can open a window into his mind via his first false telling - he is a man who is lost, who searches in circles for answers that are not there. For me, a second viewing of Rashomon, though many years later, was crucial to understanding the psychology behind the film. Yes, the medium sequence alternates between campy and genuinely freaky, and yes, the film's end feels tacked on to create some kind of moral resolution to the gloom that preceded it, but watching it twice has diminished my scruples with this film. Kurosawa has done better, but what Rashomon has given to cinema, its mechanics and mentality, is remarkably innovative considering its era.

CAMERA          *****

ACTING            **

WRITING          ****

EDITING           ****

PRODUCTION ****

Rating: 19/25 (Good)

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Mick

The film was a little slow going, but as it got into the story or the various versions of a single story it got more and more interesting. The opening credits show rain pouring down and the water washing over everything followed by a man swiftly moving towards a decrepit building. To begin with, the shots of the rain and water are amazing and the rain acts as a good background to allow the three men to converse.

Recently, I’ve been getting into paying attention to how people tell stories so I like the set up here: three people around the fire telling stories…kind of cliché, but believable. What I’m not so convinced of at this point in the film and to some extent at the end of the film is the extreme despair of the two men who are recounting their stories. I think there may be some things lost in translation here, because I’m not convinced that the story is as earth shatter as the two characters.

The film continues with the first man recounting how he was walking through the woods when he found the body. I like the shot of him standing there looking down on the samurai’s body; we are in the samurai’s head looking up at the man and what we see on the screen is the samurai’s cold dead hands and the horror on the mans face. The next interesting moment in terms of the way the story is told is with the following scene where they are being interviewed. What is interesting about these scenes is that we never see nor here the interviewer, instead the one being interviewed ends up repeating the question that the interviewer asked or answer a question we did not hear. I’m not sure why Kurosawa did this, but it’s interesting.

The second person to be interviewed is the man who caught the bandit. The man gives an account of how he came to capture the bandit, which begins the films dive into how different people recount the same events. The man claims to have found the bandit after he had been thrown from the horse he stole from the samurai, but the bandit interrupts with that death stare and that maniacal laugh. I love the bandit’s acting and character. In the first telling of the story, he does all these erratic things either to mess with the samurai and the wife or because he is a manic! In more subtle ways he does these things that make his character real like swatting at bugs. I initially thought the character was a little too over the top, but this thought subsides though when we get to the second, third and fourth telling of the interaction or the Event between the bandit, the samurai and the wife.

The bandit’s description of the Event shows him killing the samurai because the women cannot stand her shame to be known to two men. The women’s story has her killing the samurai because of his uninterested stare while the samurai’s story has the women wanting to run away with the bandit and ends with the samurai killing himself. I love the final story because of the way it stands all the traditional roles in the previous stories stand on their head. It has the women acting maniacal-similarly to the bandit in the bandit’s version of the story-while the bandit and the samurai are goof balls who can barely hold their weapons without shaking.

Finally, I love the existential moment between the common man and the woodcutter. The common man goes to take the cloths and amulet and the woodcutter disparages him for being selfish and making excuses for himself. The commoner accosts him questioning him on how can a bandit call a bandit a bandit…after all it was the woodcutter that took the dagger.

Though I found the overall film to be a little to slow for my liking, the plot, the camera work, some of the amazing shots, the diverse characters and acting made up for it.

8/10

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Rashomon (1950) Rating 7.5 out of 10

Rashomon is an extremely simple and interesting idea for a film. The telling of the same story by different characters has been done many times since but I can’t recall an example of this being done in cinema earlier than this, and for that I do give the film great appreciation.

The question becomes whether or not the films execution matches the ambition of the plot. In some ways I feel it does, the camera angles is satisfying enough, and the writing is solid. It’s interesting to note that everyone blames themselves for the murder, is it lies as the storytellers claim or is it guilt.

Where the film loses me or maybe never fully attracted me to begin with is that it’s all so theatrical, and over the top. The acting of course is, along with the fact that the story starts with two men staring in disbelief at how terrible the crimes were yet they both claim to have seen many more killings than this. So why does this murder stand out so much to them? I feel that is one of the films biggest flaws, it never does anything to prove to the audience that it was uniquely horrific.

So the question I pondered before posting was this, does the age of the film make up for its weaknesses? It seems to me that there was a time that films were much more theatrical perhaps this is because of early actors/film makers being influenced by the stage. But despite Rashomon’s age there are much earlier films with much more believable acting, Citizen’s Cane, On the Waterfront, and It Happened One Night are examples of great film that preceded it by decades and were not “too theatrical to be realistic.”

In the end I find Rashomon an ambitious and interesting film, but that unfortunately has some flaws in its execution.

-Scott-

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Mick

I agree that the acting was theatric and at first I was a little weary of it too, but I think after the fourth telling of the story the acting comes together. So, when we first meet the bandit he interrupts his captor to interject his telling of how he was captured and of the event. His antics are a little crazy and theatrical, but when we see his character in the woodcutter’s version of the event as a wimpy, scared bandit who, like the samurai, can barely hold a sword it is then that his over the top character makes sense. I do not think the over the top acting is a weakness, but is intentional in order to create a clear and comical difference in the differing accounts of the event. Either way, I think the acting is better than Mike gives credit.

I do agree with the idea that the two in the woodcutter and the priestly person make the story seem more severe than it appeared to me. However, I think the significance of this particular murder is not so much in the murder, but in the telling of the tale. If each of those people who were there experienced the event differently, then that throws our concept of what is ‘truth’ into question.

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Yes, I graded the acting the weakest - but I also feel that, as I mentioned, Kurosawa takes a lot from the theater and particularly Shakespeare in how he puts his characters out there. I also feel that the men in the beginning are so entrenched in dispossesion because they can't understand the natures of the crime and how strange the situation of it was, not necessarily how horrific the crime supposedly was. This part gave me pause in the beginning too, but seeing the psychology of the characters play out in the end made me reassess my thoughts on the opening. Also Scott, On the Waterfront came out later than Rashomon. :) I found this film to be very admirable, whilst speaking of literary techniques, of the "show and not tell" format. We can discern a whole lot from the characters without Kurosawa spelling it out for us. .. Consequently, you'd think that I wouldn't be commenting on this thing while I'm in France, but I've just returned from Montmarte, am slightly drunk (Kirsten's occupied), and I needed to waste some time. I believe it's only 2 pm east coast time. Odd! I read a little about the Rashomon gate after watching this film and this added another layer to the history and human degradation playing out on film. Wikipedia would be a good starting point for interested parties..

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