Director: Akira Kurosawa
Year: 1950
Country: Japan
Language: Japanese
Japanese Director Akira Kurosawa has had a legendary career making such brilliant films as The Seven Samurai, Throne of Blood and Rashomon. The star of this film, Toshiro Mifune, deserves credit for being one of the greatest Japanese actors in film history. Together they evoke powerful emotions and stir the soul into a frenzy of delight. While Throne of Blood was my introduction to their films, Rashomon enticed me to further look into Kurosawa's work which eventually brought me further into the history of Japanese Cinema. It was a fantastically made film that is an intellectual voyage into the nature of truth.
The film begins with a priest (Minoru Chiaki), a woodcutter (Takashi Shimura), and a commoner (Kichijuro Ueda) who take cover from a great rainstorm in an abandoned gatehouse known as Rashomon. The priest and the woodcutter decide to spend their time discussing the story of a |Samurai who was murdered three days earlier in the forest. Both men had to appear before a murder trial to give their testimony because the priest ran into the Samurai before he was murdered and the woodcutter found his body. There are three other people at this trial, all who act as direct witnesses; the bandit who murdered the samurai, the wife of the samurai and the bandit in form of a medium. They tell of a similar story, but ultimately all are somewhat different.
In the 50's Rashomon struck the world with a blow to the gut. It was made before Akira Kurosawa was known as a master of Cinema and released by a studio who had little respect for the Director. However it won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival and soon after won "Best Foreign Picture" at the Academy Awards. It opened the gates of Japanese Cinema to the rest of the world, so they could stand in awe. Indeed nobody had seen anything like Rashomon before. It had the first use of flashbacks that disagreed about the action they were flashing back to. There were first person accounts that completely differed from the other accounts, one of which that came from an incredibly creepy ghost.
I remember a Simpsons episode in which The Simpsons are going to Japan. Marge says "You'll love Japan! You liked Rashomon" and Homer replies "That's not how I remember it." Rashomon is essentially a film about the nature of truth, memory and ego. When we see the flashbacks in the film we assume they are truth, but in reality all they show is a point of view that may be a complete lie.Perhaps the witnesses aren't intentionally lieing but their memories of the incident may not be completely clear. Kurosawa points out that humans often like to change the truth to fit their own ego, to make themselves seem like a better person. Every character has a reason to exaggerate their story and embellish their own identity.
In conclusion, Rashomon is one of the most unique, thrilling and well made Japanese films of all Cinema. The cinematography is memorable, even the rape scene in this film is well shot. The elevated emotional levels of each actor, especially Mifune, heightened the acting and made for a fantasy-like feel. The scene with the medium is both unsettling, disturbing and brilliant. This may be a film you need to watch more than once to fully understand it, but when you do you will continue watching it over and over. Praise it! 5/5
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