Revisit: Rashomon

Revisit:

1950

Revisit is a series of reviews highlighting past releases that now deserve a second look.

One of the most celebrated films of world cinema, Rashomon was not only the breakthrough film for Akira Kurosawa, but for Japanese film in general. Released in 1950, it was the first Japanese film to be taken seriously in America. That’s a long time considering the Japanese have been making films almost as long as Americans have. Like most classics, it wasn’t appreciated domestically until it had some success abroad at the Venice Film Festival of 1951. In fact, its studio, Daei, opposed its entry. But the head of Italiafamilia, Guilliana Stramigioli, saw it and recommended it. It eventually won first prize and the rest is history. It’s gone on to be a staple in film history, influencing films as diverse as Hero, The Usual Suspects and The Outrage. There is even a philosophical term coined “The Rashomon effect.”

For his second period piece, Kurosawa based the film on two stories by Ryunosuke Akutagawa; “Rashomon” provides the setting, while “In a Grove” provides the characters and plot. While waiting out a rainstorm at a boarding gate called Rashomon, a woodcutter (Takashi Shimura) laments to a priest and a cynical commoner about a tragedy he has witnessed. A samurai was killed and his wife was raped in the forest. Through flashbacks, each of the four witnesses – the bandit Tajomaru (Toshiro Mifune), the samurai’s wife (Machiko Kyo), the murdered samurai through a medium (Masayuki Mori), and finally the woodcutter himself recount the events. Each recollection differs widely from the other. The audience is left to determine who is telling the truth and who is lying.

There is no clear cut answer. They are all telling the truth. And they are all lying. And this, more than the crimes themselves, is the true tragedy of Rashomon. People are incapable of telling the truth because as the commoner says, “It’s human to lie. Most of the time we can’t even be honest with ourselves.” It’s hard for people to talk about themselves without embellishing. The lies help to make them feel they are better people than they actually are. In Rashomon, even the dead can’t help but lie. As Kurosawa said, “Egoism is a sin the human being carries with him from birth; it is the most difficult to redeem.”

But there is more to it than just the ego. Memory is a slippery thing. It is unreliable, and wholly subjective. We do not remember things as they truly were, but as they are more comfortable for us. It is an involuntary, spontaneous defense mechanism. We are constantly rewriting the past to the point it scarcely resembles the truth.

One of the common criticisms of Rashomon is that the actors overact and over-emote. Everybody is shouting and frothing at the mouth. It is definitely not naturalistic. But as we see in Seven Samurai, Toshiro Mifune’s acting is no less heightened. Kurosawa was inspired by silent films where the acting had to be bigger because actors had only their faces and gestures to express emotion. Because of its simplicity, there is an honesty and purity to it. And since many of the scenes in Rashomon have no dialogue, that style of acting retains all of its power. It was Kurosawa’s intention that Rashomon be a kind of silent film. Because of necessity, silent films are often more beautiful than sound films are. Kurosawa explained, “I wanted to restore some of this beauty. I thought of it, I remember, this way; one of the techniques of modern painting is simplification, I must therefore simplify this film.”

Kurosawa purposely kept the script brief so he could concentrate on the images. This is evident early in the film as the woodcutter enters the forest. The sequence is silent save for the accompaniment of the music by Fumio Hayasaka. The moving image to the pulsating beat of Bolero music produces a hypnotic effect. The woodcutter is leaving the everyday world and journeying into a spiritual maze which is suggested by the patterns of light and shadow that envelop him. It’s a place full of ambiguity where it is easy to lose your way.

The harsh sun penetrates the forest, the last beacon for hope and reason. Kurosawa’s boldness is on display as he shoots directly into the sun, the first time it had been done before, although widely practiced today. Kurosawa encouraged the experimentation from the director of photography Kazuo Miyagawa (who would later photograph such classics as Sansho the Bailiff, Ugetsu, Floating Weeds, and Yojimbo.) Miyagawa would use (sometimes purposely broken) mirrors to reflect patterns of light and would stage elaborate high angle and low angle shots to accentuate the movement in the forest.

One criticism is that Kurosawa backtracks at the conclusion, tacking on an unconvincing and hokey humanistic ending that upends his previous arguments about the darkness of human nature. But it was revealed that Kurosawa had waited for a big cloud to appear over Rashomon gate to shoot the final scene. He wanted to show that although the sky is clear now, there is a chance that another storm will come at any moment. Unfortunately, the final scene appears optimistic because it was too sunny and clear to produce the effects of an overcast sky.

A gorgeous remastered 35mm print of Rashomon is currently touring the country’s revival houses. Now, I had seen Rashomon a few times before. The first time was a faded 16mm for a film class at college. I appreciated the philosophical ideas, but I had to take my professor’s word for its visual artistry. I rediscovered the film later on DVD. Good old Criterion had restored it faithfully and I finally understood what my professor was talking about. But it wasn’t until I saw it in 35mm that I fully appreciated it. Not only was it pure cinematic beauty. It seized being a historical artifact and was as alive as any contemporary film.

After seeing it the way it was meant to be seen, question must be asked: Who needs Avatar when you have Rashomon? Over time, much of Avatar’s sheen and gloss will fade, and, like Titanic before it, its technological gimmickry will become dated. When the bright lights dim, its shallow characterization and empty story will be exposed. Meanwhile, Rashomon’s position amongst the all-time classics will grow more secure as time goes by.

by James Shelledy