In order to expand my horizons in terms of classic film, I have been writing short reviews for one movie for every year since 1940. The beginning of a new decade, the 1950s, has finally brought me to watch, for the first time, a film by one of the most influential filmmakers in history- Akira Kurosawa.
My classic movie diary so far:
1940: Rebecca
1941: Citizen Kane
1942: There Was A Father
1943: The Ox-Bow Incident
1944: Laura
1945: Brief Encounter
1946: It's A Wonderful Life
1947: Monsieur Verdoux
1948: Rope
1949: The Third Man
Rashomon is a black and white Japanese movie that presents the story of the murder of a samurai and the rape of his wife from four different perspectives. Each story, depicted through flashbacks, is substantially different to the others and the film explores the nature of justice, truth, human selfishness and even misogyny as it recounts each tale.
I had been keen to watch this film for a long time simply because of the central premise as described in the plot synopsis. I was looking forward to watching an exploration of the unreliability of memory and the unavoidable bias in storytelling. Rashomon, however, isn't really about that; instead, the film uses its central premise to explore the idea that human beings will lie to protect their own interests and that humanity in general are a deplorable and immoral species.
The different between my expectations and the reality of the plot was a little surprising at first but it was mostly the execution of the story that left me in two minds. Each of the four stories- recounted by the bandit, the wife, a woodcutter and the samurai (through a medium)- are wildly different but often their stories work against self-interest. The wife especially narrates a story that leaves her looking incredibly guilty and unforgivably weak.
Speaking of the woman, her portrayal in this film is more complex than it may seem at first. Throughout the majority of the runtime she is insufferably weak, which makes sense because the stories are being told from the perspective of men who value her only as a possession. It isn't until the last story, the woodcutter's, that I could feel a shred of respect for her character, but it was still hard to swallow her incessant screaming, crying and laughing throughout the film.
The bandit's character is the most compellingly drawn out here- his version of the story serves to conflate his own ego and reputation. 'I clashed swords with the samurai 23 times' he claims. When we get to the last version of the event, told from the most neutral perspective, we instead see that the actual conflict was a pathetic struggle between two men who had just been belittled by a woman. The fact that he lied to inflate his honour and reputation makes sense and his story, therefore, feels the most believable in its unreliability.
It's the wife and woodcutter's stories that bewilder me- the former presents herself as a dishonourable murderess, whereas the latter reveals that he refused to be brave and step in to help the situation. If the movie is going through the effort to say that these characters are lying and that we cannot trust them...why wouldn't their stories serve to protect their own safety, reputation and honour?
Perhaps my mind is still lingering on my expectation of what I thought the plot would be. Even though I found the movie to be thought-provoking and compelling, I just wonder what the movie is saying about why humanity feels the need to lie and betray so incessantly, and if it could have adjusted details of the four stories to help convey its message a little more clearly.
Thank you for reading this article- I'm looking forward to exploring more films from the 1950's, especially because it is regarded as the Japanese Golden Age of cinema. Follow me on social media to find out what I watch for 1951.
I do not own any of the images used in this post.