Reviews of Rashomon

An evolution of Style

Posted : 1 year, 3 months ago on 21 August 2008 05:23 (A review of Rashomon)

''It's human to lie. Most of the time we can't even be honest with ourselves.''

A heinous crime and its aftermath are recalled from differing points of view.

Toshirô Mifune: Tajômaru

Ironically, Japanese critics were not enthusiastic about Rashomon when it was released in 50's Japan.

In today's world, however, Rashomon is generally considered to be the film that introduced both director Akira Kurosawa and Japanese cinema to the western parts of the globe.
Often cited as the film that prompted The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to create an award for Best Foreign Language film. It is widely regarded as a masterwork of world cinema.

Set in 12th Century Japan, the film's premise is at once both very simple yet very complicated. A man is found dead in a forest, and several people are brought forward to give testimony in the matter. In some respects their accounts agree but in numerous others, some obvious and some very subtle, their stories differentiate. As each character gives his or her version of events, the various differences pile higher and higher, leaving the viewer to wonder at the motivations involved.

Personally, Rashomon has forever been among favourites of Kurosawa's directional works.

During Akira's lifetime he managed to confirm himself as one of the world's leading film-makers. He was a film maker who created cinema which was impossible to compare, and his influence still resounds within even the most mainstream works of today. For example, the non-linear styling structure of Rashomon has been respectfully woven in numerous films since.

Rashomon was the work which propelled the career of Kurosawa, even though it was not widely regarded in its own country at the time, it was hailed by the critics of the Western world as a definitive masterpiece.

Rashomon is the compressed story of an innocent woman's rape and her husband's murder, performed by a ruthless bandit (acted out by Kurosawa's long-time muse, Toshirô Mifune).
Even though the bandit is caught and consequently put on trial, the seemingly simple crime soon becomes questionably more complicated as it is recounted from four individually detached eye-witness perspectives. Posing many philosophical and debatable questions for the viewer, the picture asks which story is the one to believe, through -what was at the time and still remains- a highly stylized storytelling technique. Establishing a verdict on the heinous crime centered upon in Rashomon is as much an ordeal as the crime itself because it proves to be an incident which provokes moral questioning and fierce debate.

The film-making techniques used in Rashomon gave birth to a distinct style that Kurosawa was prepared to develop further in his later works, which can be seen in films such as Yojimbo and Shichinin no samurai.

Level-headed pragmatism plagued Kurosawa's features throughout his earlier years, this was something that came as an advantage for his films, being that the characters (even the bad) portrayed in his films were genuine people you could feel compassion and remorse for.
Also, Kurosawa began to define genres throughout the 1950s and 1960s, while also bringing to light some now-popular methods of camera movement, e.g. dutch angles, revolving shots and amplified close-ups.

For those who question the film's offbeat narrative structure, they should ask themselves whether or not the cut-throat editing is there as a means of symbolising the colliding viewpoints. I consider this to be a daring means of combining humanitarian lies and honesty, and also a means of creating a disorientating, volatile impression. With Rashômon, Kurosawa's admiration for silent cinema came into evident practice; this can be seen through the minimalist set-pieces, which are a contrast to the complex storytelling procedure that his work embodies. The ambiguity of Rashômon is detailed through subtly metaphorical cinematography and lighting techniques. I have seen the setting of the woods as a display of the work's central atmosphere (intrigue, depth) and the shadows periodically depicting a loss of empathy and symbolizing the isolated danger of the reflective surroundings.

Kurosawa's skill is not just in dialog and relationships, his visual acuity helps accentuate these themes. When the story begins, the woods is magical, even colorful (despite the black and white used). It is a woods of fairy tale proportions, with mystical breezes and tranquil streams.
As Rashomon progresses, the woods lose more and more of their mystical quality and become dirty, dry and ultimately more real.
By the time the battle between the husband and the bandit is played out in its final representation, it is no longer a valiant battle of skill against two well-versed opponents, its a stressful, scary affair that has the two kicking up more dust than swinging their blades. The dust itself shows the degradation of the story, that is Rashomon, coming away from the abstract qualities, derived of truth and justice.

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Good, but vastly overrated.

Posted : 1 year, 7 months ago on 22 April 2008 07:53 (A review of Rashomon)

"No one tells a lie after he's said he's going to tell one."

Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon is a film that I both liked and disliked.

On the one hand it was a visual arresting, superb study of human nature. But on the other hand the film is highly boring not to mention monotonous.

Rashomon opens as a group of men start discussing a heinous crime that unfolded on an isolated bush trail, and then the film looks in-depth at four different perspectives of what happened.

For me this was a fascinating plot synopsis and I wanted to see it because it sounded quite intriguing. The audience is presented with a set of differing eye-witness accounts and are given the opportunity to draw their own conclusions.

The first thing that stood out is the cinematography and the locations. The camera is used to great effect and with great visual flair. The game actors give it everything they have and the dialogue is occasionally quite effective. At first I thought that there's no way that this could go wrong. Unfortunately, my interest in the film flew out the window within the first five minutes. Everything just became so tedious and boring, with eye-witness accounts that are poorly distinguished. I was struggling to not only figure out who is giving their testimony, but also what the hell is so different about each story. There were a few things, but nothing overly obvious. I was paying full attention to it, but you have to be some kind of mind-reader to actually comprehend what on Earth is going on!

Another thing that struck me was the melodramatic fashion in which the film was played out in. The leading female spent the whole time crying, screaming or laughing in a creepy manner. Whenever she's crying or screaming I was covering my ears as it was giving me a headache. She was indescribably irritating!

The male members of the cast weren't much better. There was one crazy maniac who spent the whole time laughing. I usually appreciate this form of acting as it displays what they're capable of, but he was so damn annoying and it was far past being a brilliant way to display the character.

But on the other hand Rashomon is a visual feast for the eyes, with impressive stylised action and some effective grainy black & white photography. The bush trail in particular gave the impression of isolation in times of danger. The film's underlying messages are truly worthwhile about the reliability of the word of a man. Lies, deceit and callousness abound. Rashomon is a much loved classic from director Akira Kurosawa. I'm not fan of the director, and therefore watched the film with an open mind, but I met the film with mixed feelings. The concept is tremendously original and groundbreaking. I just wished the execution had improvements.

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