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... Amazingly, Kurosawa was forty years old at the release of his first film, Rashomon—a relatively ripe age for a first-time director. ... This setting is again used as a backdrop for a study of the relativity of truth and perceptions in Rashomon, which won the Golden Lion award for first place at the 1951 Venice Film Festival. ... Nonlinearity was considered undesirable and revolutionary at the time of Rashomon’s release. ...
The rippling effect that Rashomon had on the world reached far further than the cinematic community. In modern legal jargon, when judges or lawyers speak about “the Rashomon effect,” they are referring to instances when firsthand eyewitnesses of crimes offer contradictory testimony about the same event or crime. It is ironic that Rashomon, a film whose subject matter deals prominently with the philosophy of justice, has contributed a term to the real-life jargon of justice.
Rashomon
Rashomon opens with its outer story, and there are three men—a priest, the woodcutter, and a commoner—taking shelter from a torrential rainstorm underneath the ancient, crumbling Rashomon Gate. ...
Separate from the events at Rashomon Gate, the inner story of Rashomon consists of four different characters—the famous bandit Tajomaru, a woman, her husband, and a lowly woodcutter—offering us, the viewers, their own personal interpretations of the events that occurred one summer afternoon long ago in a shaded, woody brook in a Japanese forest. ... This means that the real truth of what happened in the woods is impossible to distill from the conflicting stories and that there is a great amount of room for the individual viewer to take whatever meaning he or she chooses to from Rashomon. ... ”
These words are spoken in response to the bandit Tajomaru’s story by the commoner who takes shelter under Rashomon Gate with the priest and the woodcutter. ...
Upon hearing about the woman’s testimony while seeking shelter under Rashomon Gate, the commoner again offers his own brand of wisdom, to which the viewer at this point has become accustomed, on the woman’s testimony. ... Satisfyingly, the woodcutter reveals to the priest and commoner at Rashomon Gate that he was in the woods at the time of the crime and saw the whole thing. ... “Women are weak by nature,” Tajomaru reminds the husband. ...
Hearing cries, the priest, woodcutter, and commoner investigate and find a helpless baby that has been abandoned at Rashomon Gate. ...
So is Rashomon Kurosawa’s way of telling us that what happens is more important than how it happens?
Approximate Word count = 2687
Approximate Pages = 10.7
(250 words per page double spaced)
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