Amazon.com essential video: This 1950 film by Akira Kurosawa is more than a classic: it's a cinematic archetype that has served as a template for many a film since. (Its most direct influence was on a Western remake, The Outrage, starring Paul Newman and directed by Martin Ritt.) In essence, the facts surrounding a rape and murder are told from four different and contradictory points of view, suggesting the nature of truth is something less than absolute. The cast, headed by Kurosawa's favorite actor, Toshiro Mifune, is superb. --Tom Keogh
Description: Brimming with action while incisively examining the nature of truth, Rashomon is perhaps the finest film ever to investigate the philosophy of justice. Through an ingenious use of camera and flashbacks, Kurosawa reveals the complexities of human nature as four people recount different versions of the story of a man's murder and the rape of his wife. Toshiro Mifune gives another commanding performance in the eloquent masterwork that revolutionized film language and introduced Japanese cinema to the world.
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.
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.
Amazing Let me start by reminding people of the world that there are only a hand full of basic stories in existence. The rest of the stories are diverse versions of these basic hand full of plots. It's what makes Shakespeare a Classic... and the rest of those great artists.
The concepts of betrayal, loyalty, love, and death. Money and murder etc.
Rashomon had a plot o this magnitude, and for the time, this film is amazing. The scenes are amazing! I can't imagine what this guy looked like on set making it happen, but I imagine every time I watch this film.
A classic movie that raises fundamental questions "Rashomon" is one of the great movies for the ages. It challenges us to think about what "reality" might be, and leads us to wonder if we can truly comprehend "reality."
Let me begin this review with a fragment about postmodern perspectives. One key point here is that subject and object cannot be separated. We cannot "get outside" ourselves in order to objectively observe the world around us--including the world of human affairs. This is oversimplified, of course, but it provides one lens through which to consider Akira Kurosawa's great work, "Rashomon."
This 1950 film, starring Toshiro Mifune as a bandit, is based on what seems to be a straightforward event. A samurai is killed and his wife raped. The movie starts with three people seeking refuge from a heavy rain under a decayed gate in 12th century Japan. The three: a woodcutter, a priest, and a peasant. They begin talking about the incident just noted.
Then, we see the murder and rape through the eyes of the three people involved--the samurai, his wife, and the bandit. And each version (the dead samurai's version is provided through a medium) differs remarkably from the other two. In short, we have three eyewitnesses telling of a fundamentally different event. So, what is reality? That is the question at stake. And, to make matters even murkier, the woodcutter finally mentions that he had observed the whole scene himself--and his view was different still! Thus, four very distinct interpretations of a single event. The woodcutter's version might seem most plausible, but then he trips himself up by revealing something that raises questions about his motives.
Why speak of a postmodern perspective earlier in this review? Because postmodernists argue that it is difficult for people to step outside themselves and their unique perspectives and biases to observe "objective reality." And contemporary psychologists tell us the same: humans are remarkably able to distort reality to protect self-image and make their motives appear to be good (and competitors' to be not so good). In that sense, there is a great deal of human nature, psychology, and philosophy at stake in this movie.
Things sound pretty bleak, but the movie closes with an event that actually provides some hope that humans can produce value and make positive things happen.
All in all, a wonderful movie. Effects are pretty simple (the budget was unbelievably small). In the end, though, this is a movie well worth viewing, in large part because of the difficult questions that it raises.
Lies are the bye product of truth Another glorious film by Kurosawa. Here he weighs the nature of truth on a flawed and humanistic scale. Pound for pound, this movie is often considered his fattest masterpiece. This is a crime drama with some very heavy issues. There were eye witness reports of a rape and of a murder. Four witnesses testify, each with different and incompatible versions of the story. This movie points out how truth is in the eye of the beholder. Memory is unreliable, things can be perceived in different ways. Plus, there are often selfish reasons for people to bend the facts. Rashomon was beautifully shot in 1950, and its greatness stands the test of time. There is never a dull moment in this film. It has some exciting swordplay and fighting, plus a constant battle of wits as the truth gets served in various doses. I totally love how the real truth is left up to interpretation in this film, it could cause some nice debates. The only solid fact is that anyone serious about the art of film should check this masterpiece out.
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