"Rashomon" is a classic whodunnit murder mystery, but with a major twist. You know that old board game Clue? Imagine playing that game with your friends but with trick cards, loaded dice, and everyone's allowed, if not obligated, to cheat. Got it? Solve the mystery!
Eventually the result would likely be all of you sitting around, sullen, confused & frustrated with each of you taking turns muttering, "I just don't understand!" And that is exactly how the opening scene of "Rashomon" begins.
Two depressed looking men are sitting in the ruins of an old building beneath a sign that reads "Rashomon". They are waiting for a torrential storm to pass. A third man joins them also seeking shelter and asks them why the long faces. That's your cue to strap on your seatbelt because after that, all bets are off in the ways of truth, perception and storytelling. The two men tell the tale, as they had heard through witnesses' testimonies it in court, regarding a dead man, his wife, and the bandit accused of the murder. The twist is that each testimony drastically contradicts each of the others. And as the story is visually played out for us in each version, we suddenly realize how subjective "truth" is.
The effect is poetic and powerful. As Robert Altman (director of MASH, Shortcuts, Gosford Park) commented:
"When one sees a film, you see the characters on screen; it's not like reading where you imagine certain things. You see very specific things. You see a tree, you see a sword. So you take that as truth. But in this film, you take it as truth, and then you find out that it is not necessarily true. And you see various versions of the episode that has taken place, and you're never told which is true and which isn't true ... So it becomes a poem, and it cracks this visual thing that we have in our minds that if we see it, it must be a fact."
Augmented by Kurosawa's brilliant directing, Miyagawa's excellent camera work, and the symbolic majesty of the forest of Nara which constantly presents a very Monet-like, impressionistic veil of leaves and shadows throughout the film, "Rashomon" is so much more than a whodunnit. It's the greatest of them all, leading us the viewers deeper and deeper into the psychological and metaphysical thicket, until ultimately we may end up feeling like one of the characters in the movie who laments: "I don't even know my own soul."
Eventually the result would likely be all of you sitting around, sullen, confused & frustrated with each of you taking turns muttering, "I just don't understand!" And that is exactly how the opening scene of "Rashomon" begins.
Two depressed looking men are sitting in the ruins of an old building beneath a sign that reads "Rashomon". They are waiting for a torrential storm to pass. A third man joins them also seeking shelter and asks them why the long faces. That's your cue to strap on your seatbelt because after that, all bets are off in the ways of truth, perception and storytelling. The two men tell the tale, as they had heard through witnesses' testimonies it in court, regarding a dead man, his wife, and the bandit accused of the murder. The twist is that each testimony drastically contradicts each of the others. And as the story is visually played out for us in each version, we suddenly realize how subjective "truth" is.
The effect is poetic and powerful. As Robert Altman (director of MASH, Shortcuts, Gosford Park) commented:
"When one sees a film, you see the characters on screen; it's not like reading where you imagine certain things. You see very specific things. You see a tree, you see a sword. So you take that as truth. But in this film, you take it as truth, and then you find out that it is not necessarily true. And you see various versions of the episode that has taken place, and you're never told which is true and which isn't true ... So it becomes a poem, and it cracks this visual thing that we have in our minds that if we see it, it must be a fact."
Augmented by Kurosawa's brilliant directing, Miyagawa's excellent camera work, and the symbolic majesty of the forest of Nara which constantly presents a very Monet-like, impressionistic veil of leaves and shadows throughout the film, "Rashomon" is so much more than a whodunnit. It's the greatest of them all, leading us the viewers deeper and deeper into the psychological and metaphysical thicket, until ultimately we may end up feeling like one of the characters in the movie who laments: "I don't even know my own soul."