Director: Akira
Kurosawa
Screenplay: Akira
Kurosawa & Shinobu Hashimoto based on the stories “Rashomon,” and “In a
Grove,” by Ryunosuke Akutagawa
To those who don’t know the name, and, really if you don’t,
you better get a recheck on your film IQ, Kurosawa’s work, starting with his
Oscar-Winning hit “Rashomon,” is 1950, broke the doors down for Japanese
films being viewed in America, has been a direct and immediate source of
inspiration for filmmakers like Coppola, Speilberg, Lucas, Tarantino, Leone, Scorsese,
Eastwood,… all of them consider Kurosawa, not a master, but “the master.” Sergio
Leone in particular remade two of his films “Yojimbo", and it's sequel "Sanjuro" into the Clint
Eastwood westerns “A Fistful of Dollars,” and “For a Few Dollars More,” and
John Sturges’s western “The Magnificient Seven,” is a remake of Kurosawa’s,
“The Seven Samurai.” This film “Rashomon,” which is widely considered one of
the greatest films ever made, was a huge hit when it got released, despite the
fact the film was barely released at all, and was actually kind of lucky to
have been made. Many people on the crew apparently understood the movie’s
premise, and the Japanese production company that did the film hated it so
much, the head of the company took his name off the credits. The movie shows an
incident as seen from four separate and distinct points-of-views, each one of
them ending, with the Samurai, Takehiro (Masayuki Mori) getting killed and his
wife, Masako (Machiko Kyo) getting raped, and the Bandit, Tajomaro (Toshiro
Mifune) getting arrested. It takes place in the 12th Century Japan,
and a Priest (Minoru Chiaki) and a Woodcutter (Takashi Shimura) are staying out
of the rain as a man who is usually described only a “Commoner,” (Kichijiro
Ueda) comes in from the rain to where they're at. The Priest and Woodcutter
are confused and baffled by the events they’ve just heard during a court trial
that happened earlier in the day, in which all three people involved in the earlier
event claim to be the murderer, including the victim whose testimony was given through
a medium. We are then shown each character’s POV’s through distinct flashbacks,
each one showing it from a different perspective, each emphasizing only certain
parts of what each character thinks happened. None of the characters are
right, but none of them are wrong, either. We never get a true description
of what actually happened either, and even if we did, it wouldn’t be a true
description of the events, as those events would still be shown through a
subjective viewpoint., and that is basically the point of the movie in of
itself, that truth is subjective. Those last three words basically describe
the contents of the entire film, yet the movie plays more philosophical than that
and encourages the audience to think for ourselves and try to piece together
our own plausible scenario for the events, and the movies is told in such a way
that we feel as though we are eventually through these flashbacks are going to
come to an eventual conclusion. The trick of the movie is that we don’t. Each
scenario given to us are plausible but are completely subjective, even the one
which appears to give the most unbiased truth of events is still told from
someone’s views of the events, so we’re still looking at a perspective. In our search
for absolute truth, we find that there isn’t one. According to some, it's the first movie to ever use flashbacks that weren't trustworthy. Normally, flashback are used mainly to give us information about what happened before, and are always regarded as truth. Not here. The only truths that this
movie seems to have is that a trial occurred, a man was killed, his wife was
raped, a thief was involved, and a witness saw it, and yet these events are so
unbelievable it’s placed the people who have heard them in a state of
amazement. The final sequence of the film was much criticized even at the time,
and personally, I’ll be honest, I don’t know what it means. Theories yes, but
in this movie, is seems kind of redundant to even have theories on the film
because I’d be looking at them through the context of the events in the film,
and with this movie, that hardly seems appropriate. The movie works on the mind
and dares us to make us think, and cares little of what we actually think about
because we are all limited by our own thoughts and what we make of them, so I
just let the ending stay as it is, and let it be. If I’ve made this film seem
like a wood falling in a tree theory, there may be something to it, and maybe
that’s all it is, or maybe it isn’t. But this film, if anything, it’ll make you
wonder why it would matter if it made a sound or not, unfortunately though, that’s
still my thought.
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