Rashomon - Criterion Collection (1951)

Great, but end bombs

Akira Kurosawa had been a filmmaker for almost a decade, since his 1943 debut film Sugata Sanshiro, and had some renown in his native Japan, when, in 1950, his film Rashomon rocketed him to international acclaim, including the Academy Award For Best Foreign Film, after winning the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival brought the film and its director, and Japanese cinema, a Western audience. He deserved every plaudit he received for it, as well as every ticket sold, because it is an excellent film. Yes, there are some flaws- minor, such as the all too sunny (literally) ending, and some of the over the top hammy acting of Toshiro Mifune as the bandit Tajomaru, but given what was coming out of Hollywood at the time- mind-numbing musicals and grade B comedies- Kurosawa brought filmmaking style back to an earlier, simpler place, even as he many times over increased the bar for narrative complexity. Given that the film is not even an hour and a half long, the many interpretations of the multifarious actions of the characters are all the more impressive.
The story is as familiar as it is simple. The central ostensible narrative concerns the rape of a woman (Machiko Kyo) and the murder of her Samurai husband (Masayuki Mori), both unnamed, in the 11th or 12th Century, in a wooded glen. The main suspect is the notorious bandit Tajomaru (Mifune), yet, the viewer cannot be certain, for never do we get a single unbiased version of the events that transpire. All three of the main characters tell self-serving versions of the story of how the lady was raped and the Samurai murdered....The film does stretch real reality, a bit, in that while it is well known that minor differences crop up in people's versions of singular events, such glaring inconsistencies as whether or not the Samurai died of a knife or sword wound are implausible, even given the film's setting. But, we allow for this dramatic license because the resonance of the tale's moral is so profound, as well the fact that Kurosawa does not cop out by giving us a `real' authoritative version. That said, the end of the film, after the differing tales of the crime have been discussed thoroughly by the woodcutter, priest, and commoner, Kurosawa seems to stumble, as if he did not have a really good way to end the film. The commoner hears a baby, who's been abandoned at the temple. He steals its blanket, and the priest and woodcutter try to stop him, claiming him evil. He responds by implying that the abandoning parents were evil, and that the woodcutter is a liar, and possible killer. Off into the rain he goes, with his booty. The priest and woodcutter stand with the child until the rain breaks and the sun emerges. The woodcutter offers to take the babe as his own, that he has six children already, and another mouth will hardly matter. The priest feels that his optimism about life and mankind, so tested by the events he has seen, is reaffirmed by the woodcutter's generous offer, and the sun shines through the clouds. That such a terrifically subtle and ambiguous film ends so tritely (the emergent sun and abandoned and rescued baby are a simply awful and heavy-handed use of symbolism), and preachily, reminded me of the greatly disappointing ending that Fyodor Dostoevsky tacked on to Crime And Punishment, in his two terrible epilogues that hammer the book's themes into a reader's head, for he distrusted his own book's ability to convey those themes. The visual and musical aspects of the film's ends do much to mitigate the narrative drop to the floor Crime And Punishment bears, and Rashomon is still a great film, partly because its ending is not as bad as Crime And Punishment's, and partly because it reaches greater artistic heights, and dares more conventions, than Dostoevsky's novel. Still, there's no excuse for its veer from even greater heights, even if the last few minutes are not the heart of the film.
While all the actors are wonderful, too much attention has been given to Toshiro Mifune's loony overacting (sometimes a necessity for the comic and divergent elements to emerge) as the bandit. Yes, this film made him a star, but the best performance in the film is by Masayuki Mori, already a major film and stage star in Japan. His is a far less showy role than Mifune's, but he conveys the slight differences all the versions the others tell with none of the easy visual pyrotechnics Mifune's almost boobish bandit is allowed. The raising of an eyebrow can mean the difference between truth and lie, and Mori is expert at walking the line between those ends. Machiko Kyo, as the wife, is the least notable performer.
This motto of the film is not only true, but so powerfully true that the term Rashomon Effect was coined to signify the differing perceptions of individuals over singular events, and has been used in both psychological and jurisprudential venues. Ultimately, the film is about even more than the difficulties of interpreting reality and truth, but about how and why they swerve under the force of mere human egoism. Of course, the beauty of the film really lies in the fact that all of its viewers think it's about something other than what it may ultimately be about, which only recapitulates the internal characters' dilemmas, further binding us emotionally in their angst, making us feel what they live. In this empathy Kurosawa cinches and twists that bind, and we are turned from mere percipients into purveyors of an art and reality for our own selves that we, unfortunately, too rarely experience.
September 16, 2008

Kurosawa's synoptic story

Everytime I watch "Rashomon," I'm reminded of the problem of the synoptic gospels. How can three accounts of the same person differ so much in detail? And do the differences between them render them false?

It seems to me that Kurosawa invites viewers to reflect on memory, narrative, and accuracy in this gripping synoptic account of the murder of a husband and the rape of his wife. That the two crimes took place is indisputable. But the four witnesses to them--a woodcutter, the wife, the criminal, and the victim (through a medium) all famously give different accounts of them. Kurosawa deliberately leaves the viewer in suspense as to the "correct" account. Accuracy isn't what's important here so much as the four different narratives and the psychological reasons why the four witnesses experienced the same event so differently. If there was ever a compelling argument against taking eye-witness reports literally, this is it.

And yet truth emerges from the four accounts, as from the three synoptic gospels. It's not literal truth, but is what might be called existential truth. We learn something valuable about the way in which memory reconstructs events and about human passions, fears, hopes, and yearning.

So much has been said about Kazuo Miyagawa's cinematography here and elsewhere that I've nothing to add. It's really genius the way he manages to capture the dappled light of the forest, and his ability to switch back and forth between the faces of the witnesses without in any way blocking the story's flow is admirable. The acting, while a bit overblown in places for western tastes (particularly Toshiro Mifune's portrayal of the criminal), isn't bad at all.

The Criterion edition is, as usual, nicely transferred. Robert Altman's accompanying video commentary on the film is worse than useless--rambling, full of platitudes, repetitive. But the accompanying booklet is well-written and informative. September 10, 2008

I wouldn't call it a masterpiece

Let me start off by saying I love Kurosawa and have seen many of his films, but this one was a little slow and felt too simple and shallow. I got the point of what he was trying to say almost immediately (truth is relative and depends on the person and that everyone's version of a story is told to make him or her look best), and didn't need to go through every character's perspective to get that point. It felt like he painfully belabored the point and not much else was added to make the plot interesting. And in some places the acting was overdone for the plot/genre and was actually a little bit distracting to me. I'm not saying that I disliked the movie, I just didn't think it was that it could qualify as a masterpiece. August 4, 2008

Grossly over rated...

A Japanese film from the 50's and winner of many awards including the Best Foreign Language Film at the 25th Academy awards. The film shares the different accounts of 4 witnesses of a rape of a woman and suspected murder of her husband - the 4 witnesses being a notorious bandit, a samurai and his wife, a woodchopper who tripped into the scene and a Priest who crossed paths with the samurai. The 4 separate accounts have many commonalities yet conclude quite differently - and are shared by the Woodcutter and the priest under shelter in a blinding rainstorm. Without giving away the plot line and outcome - the moral of the story is that all men (and woman) can be self-serving/selfish and one sees the same incident from their own unique and self-serving vantage point - yet there is hope for humanity.

I appreciated the director's manner of shifting smoothly from one eye witness accounting to another without confusion. I also enjoyed the cinematography (the rains, the forests, the facial expressions). However, while the film was reasonably short at 88 minutes, I felt that the message could have been delivered in ½ the time. The acting seemed simplistic, over-dramatized and overplayed - like a B/C rated Kung Fu movie (w/o the lip sinking). This movie wasn't for me.
June 18, 2008

A Watershed Moment in the History of Cinema

Rashomon was the first Japanese movie widely distributed in the West. Fair to say, it was probably the first Asian movie almost all of it's Western audience had ever seen. This masterpiece introduced the filmgoing world to one of the greatest writer/director/editors ever (Kurosawa), one of the greatest actors ever (Mifune), a great actor (Takashi Shimura) one of the greatest cinematographers ever (Miyagawa) and the greatest director/actor team ever. If it had no historical import, it would still be a masterpiece and probably one of the best hundred or so movies ever made. Rashomon stands as one of the most important movies ever.

Japanese cinema starts with Kurosawa. There are many fine Japanese directors but Kurosawa is the first stop for anyone interested in watching and understanding Japanese movies. He is widely understood as the most "western" of Japanese directors. In fact, he is so accessible to Western audiences, he was criticized by Japanese critics and audiences for not being Japanese enough. Rashomon is one of the first Kurosawa films to see.

Four stories, five if you include the temple as a separate narrative, four suspect truths, innumerable angles of morality, brilliant cinematography, fascinating acting, a samurai fight parody, exceptional editing, and a direct challenge to the very meaning of life. All this in less than 90 minutes. The word "kaleidoscopic" comes to mind.

Criterion Collection: I would recommend the commentary after a viewing or two because it is hard to follow all of the changing perspectives and shifts in time and some relevant aspects of Japanese history and culture were lost on this American viewer. The other extras aren't much to write home about. May 31, 2008

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