[Movie] Rashômon

Akira Kurosawa is the godfather of Japanese movies. He's also been a tremendous influence for Hollywood, his Hidden Fortress was a major inspiration for George Lucas' Star Wars and his Seven Samurai have been copied time and time again, most notably in The Magnificient Seven. Rashômon has not been copied as such by Hollywood, but at the time of its making (1950) the non-linear storytelling - the story is told mostly in flashback - and the ambiguity of the characters' morale was untypical at the time. Especially the "I remember that differently" storytelling device has since found its way into cinemas mainstream, or even TV (having recently watched the third season of the BBC's Coupling, in the episode Remember This two of the protagonist experience a Rashômon effect when trying to remember the party they first met at).

Rashômon is set in 11^th century Japan, a time of crisis, war, famine and frequent death. The movie opens with a woodcutter, a priest and a derelict man meeting in streaming rain in a half ruined temple. The priest and the woodcutter are quite outraged, the man wants to know why. They tell him. The woodcutter gives an account of how he found the body of a murdered samurai in a glade. He reported the murder and shortly thereafter a known bandit is arrested. The woodcutter tells the tale of the bandit's questioning, which results in another flashback (so the story is really told in double-flashback) of the bandit's account of events. Later the wife of the samurai is found and also questioned, as is the spirit of the murdered man through a medium. The three accounts differ greatly, every one of the questioned tries to embellish his actions while trying to make the other parties look bad.

Back at the temple, the derelict man notes that the woodcutter's account of how he first found the body doesn't match up and confronts him. So the fourth account of events, from the woodcutter, is told. Here the events take another different road, this time embellished in the woodcutter's favour. Afterwards the derelict man finds a baby left in another part of the ruined temple by its parents. He just takes the baby's blanket and wants to leave. The woodcutter and the priest are outraged, but the man just points out that the woodcutter most likely took a precious dagger from the scene of the crime, which he conveniently left out of his account of events. The woodcutter is dumbstruck, but his conscience rears and he decides to take the baby in and raise it as his own. When he walks away with the child, the rain stops and the sun comes out from behind the clouds.

Rashômon is a exploration of human tendency to embellish events in their favour. The accounts of the witnesses differ greatly, every one of them designed to give the maximum of honor to the narrator. Kurosawa ends the movie on an optimistic note, when he lets the woodcutter overcome his selfishness and adopt the abandoned baby. The acting is good, only Toshiro Mifunes antics as the bandit are a bit over the top. The movie has some very good visuals, the shots in the temple with the streaming rain in the background or the scenes in the courtyard where the accounts of the witnesses are heard, while the already questioned people are lined up in the back along the wall, are exceptionally done.

The Criterion DVD is a treat, the booklet contains an intro by a film critic, excerpts from Kurosawas autobiography and the two short stories the movie is based on. The DVD itself contains an introduction by Robert Altman, a commentary track by a film historian and some excerpts from a documentation about the film's cinematographer. There is also an English dub, but it's not very good allegedly, I've watched the film in Japanese with English subtitles. Watch this if you are interested in where many of the inspirations of modern cinematography and storytelling came from, but also if you just want to see a good movie and are not put off by subtitles or b/w.