Rashomon is my first Kurosawa film....i've been meaning to watch one of his for literally decades. Life has a habit of getting in the way.
All that lived life, and watched films, since first hearing about Kurosawa back in the 90's, have no doubt had a dulling effect on Rashomon's potential impression on me. It's not one of the greatest films of all time, that's for sure.
The biggest issue is that the build-up at the beginning promises a quite extraordinary tale. But what we got was a humdrum assault story. It significantly hamstrings the entire film, as the whole time I was holding out for a mega plot-twist that never came.
Thankfully, there's a bunch of good stuff too. The plot-device of showing this story from each character's perspective was interesting. The bandit character was entertaining, tho' the highlight of the film was the section with the dead Samurai's perspective via the medium. Surreal and even comedic! All the actors' did a good job. The woman was starting to annoy with her constant crying (however understandable) but that was partially offset by it being a potential narrative factor: 'women cry to hide their lies', and totally offset with her great scene when she cut the two men down to size, berating them for their lack of manhood (of all things!)
I enjoyed the rainy scenes with the storytellers, felt quite immersive. Some very nice camera work generally. The sunny ending was appreciated too.
A 6/10 is decent, good enough to have felt worth watching. And there's enough good stuff in there to make me wanna check out another Kurosawa. However, while I understand this movie's historical influence on culture, here in the year 2023 it feels a little too lightweight & inconsequential to warrant big praise.
Some old films like Citizen Kane, What a Wonderful Life, Moby Dick, Ben Hur, The Innocents and a bunch more count among my all-time favourites...they're still excellent pictures now. So I'm interested to find a Kurosawa to count among them. Rashomon isn't the one, tho'.
All that lived life, and watched films, since first hearing about Kurosawa back in the 90's, have no doubt had a dulling effect on Rashomon's potential impression on me. It's not one of the greatest films of all time, that's for sure.
The biggest issue is that the build-up at the beginning promises a quite extraordinary tale. But what we got was a humdrum assault story. It significantly hamstrings the entire film, as the whole time I was holding out for a mega plot-twist that never came.
Thankfully, there's a bunch of good stuff too. The plot-device of showing this story from each character's perspective was interesting. The bandit character was entertaining, tho' the highlight of the film was the section with the dead Samurai's perspective via the medium. Surreal and even comedic! All the actors' did a good job. The woman was starting to annoy with her constant crying (however understandable) but that was partially offset by it being a potential narrative factor: 'women cry to hide their lies', and totally offset with her great scene when she cut the two men down to size, berating them for their lack of manhood (of all things!)
I enjoyed the rainy scenes with the storytellers, felt quite immersive. Some very nice camera work generally. The sunny ending was appreciated too.
A 6/10 is decent, good enough to have felt worth watching. And there's enough good stuff in there to make me wanna check out another Kurosawa. However, while I understand this movie's historical influence on culture, here in the year 2023 it feels a little too lightweight & inconsequential to warrant big praise.
Some old films like Citizen Kane, What a Wonderful Life, Moby Dick, Ben Hur, The Innocents and a bunch more count among my all-time favourites...they're still excellent pictures now. So I'm interested to find a Kurosawa to count among them. Rashomon isn't the one, tho'.