Movie #: 559 Title: Rashomon 1951

Rating: 9.50

Director (last): Kurosawa (first): Akira

Writer (last): Hashimoto (first): Shinobu

Based on a story by Ryunosuke Akutagawa, "In a Grove". One of the most powerful and moving films ever made. I saw this when I was about 16 or so and it had a decisive influence on my perception of truth and reality from that moment onwards. The movie is framed by sequences of three men gathered at the ruins of a temple, the Rashomon of the title, in the pouring rain. A priest and a woodsman are discussing a shocking trial. A thief joins them and listens to their story. The woodsman was the one who found the body of a murdered man. The story is simple--at first. A man, a samurai, and his beautiful bride are travelling through a dangerous part of the country. Shortly after they enter a forest, a thief, who has been following them, attacks and robs them, and rapes the wife. The husband is murdered. The thief is soon apprehended and a trial is held. To the astonishment of the court, all three of the participants (the husband is called back from the dead by a medium) claim to be the murderer. As each tells his or her version of the events, it becomes clear that each is motivated by shame, and is willing to confess to murder or suicide rather than accept dishonor. Each claims to have lived up to the noble purpose of his/her role in life, and to have fulfilled the demands of humanity under the circumstances. The thief, having won over the wife with his physical domination, challenges the husband for her, and kills her after an intense duel. The wife, disgraced by the rape, and humiliated by her husband's rejection, stabs him with her dagger. The husband, speaking from hell through a medium, insists his wife behaved dishonorably, and the thief fled, leaving him no choice but to commit suicide. But one of the men at the Rashomon admits that he actually witnessed the attack. All behaved with dishonor and cowardice. Even he did-- he stole the valuable dagger right out of the husband's chest. The importance of this statement should be considered in reference to its date and time: shortly after the end of World War II. This idea has been ripped off time and time and again, but never done as well. Roger Ebert says, "It's not about culpability or innocence. Instead, it focuses on something far more profound and thought- provoking: the inability of any one man to know the truth, no matter how clearly he thinks he sees things. Perspective distorts reality and makes the absolute truth unknowable." I think that misses the point. It's not about the men talking about the murder: it's about far each of the participants in the drama are willing to go to conceal their own weak and corrupt human nature. The importance of the wife's mocking laughter is not that we can't know for sure what she felt-- it's that she is so ashamed of being taken by the thief that she would rather see her husband dead than continue to exist in the cruel gaze of his knowing expression, and his refusal to kill the thief who has dishonored her. Consider the timing of "Rashomon": 1950, a mere five years after Japan's catastrophic defeat in World War II, and the atrocities they committed, and were committed against them (the bomb-- of course). Japan entered the war under the delusions of patriotic honor, of the emperor's god-like status, only to discover the writhing rot beneath the glistening surface.

Is this movie a "gem"? No

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Added: 1974-01-01 [yyyy-mm-dd]