| |
|||
 |
|||
|
|||
|
|
Rashomon
A woodcutter and a priest sit in a high-ceilinged shelter and watch the rain as it pours mercilessly from the sky, reducing the world around them to slimy mud. They have just witnessed a story of pain, death, and misery, and both are rendered speechless—the woodcutter out of confusion, and the priest because, in his words, “If this story is true, then I have lost all faith in the human soul.” The woodcutter responds with equal shock, “I could never believe that such a thing could have taken place!” A commoner comes upon them, also seeking shelter. He overhears their mutterings and is naturally as curious as we are. He is a rugged, honest fellow who understands that in order to survive in 11th century Japan, you have to be a selfish scoundrel, capable of murder and thievery. As a result, he doesn’t believe that any event that these men have witnessed—no matter how terrible—could render him as speechless as they are. Nevertheless, he joins them by their fire and insists that they tell him this “shocking” tale. After this opening sequence, Akira Kurosawa has generated so much suspense around the tale that these men know that we understand that he has a lot of live up to. He lives up to it in a way that only Kurosawa ever could. Wow, does he ever live up to it. Rashomon is, frankly, one of the greatest movies ever made. It is Kurosawa’s essay on the darkness of the human soul, yet the attempt to grasp into the darkness for goodness and selflessness, even if it all might be, as one character observes, “make-believe.” Though he had many films under his belt before this one premiered in 1950 and took audiences by storm, it is generally regarded as the one that put him on the international map and paved the way for his other great films, among them The Hidden Fortress, Throne of Blood, Kagemusha, Ikiru, Yojimbo, Sanjuro, Ran, and, of course, Seven Samurai. Someone recently asked me what I thought the greatest movie of all time was. As someone in love with cinema, I can’t reasonably give one fair answer, but surely the greatest of all movies must be one of the films mentioned in this paragraph. The tale concerns actually four variations of the same story, given as testimonies in a criminal court. Though the stories conflict, there are a few things that we know for sure: A samurai ( Masayuki Mori) has been killed, and his wife ( Machiko Kyô) raped by a notorious bandit named Tajômaru ( Toshirô Mifune). We hear the testimonies of the violated woman, the bandit, the murdered husband via a medium (in a sequence that packs as much power as anything you’ve seen in a horror movie), and the woodcutter himself. They are relayed to a judge who is investigating a murder, though he remains invisible and speechless behind the camera—Kurosawa’s method of turning us into the judge oursvles, attempting to find the truth in four conflicting stories. I now have to be very careful in revealing the twists that come in the story, and the startling surprises that they bring. I am idealistic enough to suspect that many people do not know the twists already (with good reason: I asked a girl a few weeks ago if she had ever heard of Akira Kurosawa, and she responded, “Of course. Isn’t he the guy who directed The Ring?” I went home and quietly cried myself to sleep), and they must come as disquieting revelations in order to best drive the nail into the film’s thesis. I will only reveal this: All testimonies concur that Tajômaru captured the samurai and raped his wife (in a heartbreaking scene handled with brilliant, tasteful restrain), but they drastically contradict one another after these points. That said, all four variations are essential to revealing significant characteristics of all of the involved persons, and perhaps revealing a larger truth, which points back to the priest’s original observation in the first scene: “Because men are weak, they lie to deceive themselves.” Kurosawa creates this story with mainly his camera, which he always considered a character as much as any of the actors. The film has no more than three locations—the shadowed woods where the crime is committed, the sun-lit court where the crime is investigated, and the rainy pavilion where it is recalled. The cinematography by Kazuo Miyagawa effectively captures the mood of these different settings, which are all used as metaphors: The thick, jungle-like woods represent sin, with the patches from the sun that sprinkle in representing goodness, trying but failing to uncover the characters. The sun finally shines onto the characters in the court, revealing their shame, but unable to discover the truth contained within them, or whether or not there is really a “truth” at all. The rain that eventually replaces the sun reflects the goodness that seems to drowned with the characters as they reflect on what they have witnessed. Rashomon also uses a much-imitated structure that was groundbreaking in its time. The flashback, and often the flashback-within-the-flashback, is effectively used here to reveal the characters’ journeys and variations on the terrible crime that has been committed. These variations shake the very foundation on which we watch the movie. As Robert Altman correctly points out on his introduction of the film on the Criterion Collection DVD edition, the audience automatically accepts what they see on film as truth—every tree, every word, and every sword. Yet to make them question these truths leaves them helpless to the direction that the film takes them, and they are forced to rely not on their own observations but the vision of the director. It is a rug pulled out from underneath them, and by continuously shifting gears, Kurosawa challenges the very nature of “truth.” I will give in a little and tell you that Kurosawa never reveals which testimony is the accurate account of events, if any of them. That’s because the truth is not what it at stake here; it is not the point of the movie. Consider the painstaking detail given to the scheming Tajômaru and his lust, or the woman and her shame, or the samurai and his almost passive acceptance, and you tap into the idea that Kurosawa is getting at: How the samurai was killed, and who killed him, is not the point. The point is, as long as people live selfishly, we are all responsible for killing one another, no matter who actually stabs who. This point is proved here to be chilling and correct; however, as the commoner who hears the different stories discloses, selfishness is necessary to survive in a world of egocentricity and darkness. “Goodness” is therefore a false, human invention, created to try to cover our sins with hope. Thus, even goodness has been reduced to a lie, and we find here the great paradox: To be selfish is to lie, in order to survive in this miserable world. And to be good is to lie, because we deny our nature. This sounds terribly pessimistic, and it is. But I don’t believe that Kurosawa gives any direct support to this theory, but simply offers it to the audience as something to consider. Rashomon is ultimately a film more about questions than answers. It prods us, pokes at us, makes us question what we believe in, and why. Is the world evil? If it isn’t, how can you prove otherwise? If it is, is it better to struggle to be good, like the priest and the woodcutter do, or to simply embrace man’s wickedness, like the commoner? Has goodness given up on us, like the sun has submitted to the rain? Or, like the priest, do we still see the sun, even in the rain, through acts of goodness? It’s all up for interpretation, but I have a theory: I think that Kurosawa is saying that, much like the scenes in the woods, the world is dense with sin and hurt, but the sun still shines and pokes through the foliage. It is therefore our job to reach for the sun when we can see it, and when we cannot, to take shelter from the rain. That sun, in a world full of contradictions, is only truth worth embracing. Cast: Janus Films presents a film by Daiei Motion Picture Co. Ltd. Directed by Akira Kurosawa. Written by Kurosawa and Shinobu Hashimoto, from the story by Ryunosuke Akutagawa. No M.P.A.A. rating, but I’d give it a PG-13 for scary images, mature themes, and a scene of implied sexuality. Running time: 88 minutes. Original Japanese theatrical release date: August 25, 1950. In Japanese, with English subtitles. Questions? Comments? E-mail me: danel_the_tinman@hotmail.com |
||
