Topic: "Rashomon" review by Zarban (hidden spoilers)
Rashomon (1950) is Akira Kurosawa’s dramatic meditation on perspective. It is, ostensibly, a period murder mystery, with the story told in flashback by the different characters, each of whom has a very different version of the events. Anyone familiar with Kurosawa’s later samurai adventures (Seven Samurai, Hidden Fortress, Yojimbo, Sanjuro) will likely find this a little slow and cloistered at first. It consists of just two sets and a few locations in a woodland, and the cast is so small that we don’t even see or hear the investigators who question the witnesses, just the witnesses’ responses.
The story is closely adapted from a much older Japanese short story (“In a Grove”) and borrows its frame from another. The frame consists of a woodcutter, a priest, and a peasant who wait out a torrential rain storm at a ruined city gate (Rashomon gate) and lament the state of humanity based on what the woodcutter and priest have witnessed. The two have just testified in court about a rape and murder case involving a bandit, a woman, and her samurai husband. Having told what ancillary knowledge they have of the case, the two men sit and hear the conflicting stories of the three people directly involved—including the murdered samurai, via a spirit medium(!) Each of the stories has elements that sound plausible and others that sound self-servingly false.
Reportedly, even the actors themselves did not know the “truth” about the case, and Kurosawa carries forward the original author’s decision not to reveal all. Clearly then, this isn’t a drawing room mystery whose solution will be handed to us (altho Kurosawa pretends to do so with another version of events—and then yanks it too away from us). Instead, as the story unfolds again and again from different perspectives, the director invites us to speculate and meditate on the “true” facts and the ulterior motives of the speakers.
It’s a fascinating story—once it gets going—and an engaging mystery despite the director’s clear intent that we focus more on the genuine differences in perspective and the face-saving lies. It feels like a trippy mystery with an answer (a bit like Mulholland Drive) but with a broader point than merely entertaining us with a sordid tale. It really does seek to enlighten us a little about human nature.
Many critics and scholars have speculated on the symbolism in the film. I’m of the mind that authors rarely plan such things and rarely succeed when they do plan. But I don’t doubt that Kurosawa consciously uses the storm at the gate to represent the commoners’ doubt in humanity and the dappled sunlight among the trees during the crime to represent the varying shades of truth we are seeing. And each time we return to the Rashomon gate, the commoners are tearing pieces off it to use as firewood, implying that truth can be altered and destroyed when used for selfish purposes.
In the end, Kurosawa abandons his sources (both of which end sourly) and constructs a reason for the sky to clear for his commoners and us. But it feels a little artificial, and we can, I think, be forgiven if we imagine that the director has himself slyly altered the story to suit his purposes.