Rashomon

Rashōmon—the film that changed my life.

The loss of narrative certainty. The loss of Truth. A perfect post-War movie... or so I thought when I first saw it at age 18. But I've come to learn a few interesting things about this problematic film.

First, it's not based wholly on the Akutagawa Ryūnosuke's tale of the same name. The Akutagawa short story is one on the nature of evil and the necessity of evil to get by in an evil world. Kurosawa's brilliance is in interpolating another Akutagawa classic, Yabu no Naka ("In a Grove"). It is Yabu that addresses narrative breakdowns and the subjectivity of truth. In fact, the format is nearly identical to the main story of Kurosawa's film: a samurai is tied to a tree by a robber, his wife raped, and his body found dead. The ostensible killer is captured. Witnesses at the inquiry/trial each tell their irreconcilable stories. There is no explicit resolution. Kurosawa himself says that the dead man lied in his testimony, but I have long wondered whether his audience in Japan got that. I know this idea was put in my head artificially at Earlham, but I guess I have to wonder whether a Japanese audience would attribute the capacity, let alone the volition, to lie to a deceased and thereby "holy" spirit. I wonder whether Kurosawa missed his mark at home... but at the same time I think that this is what made the film so powerful for non-Japanese audiences unsaddled by this (potential) misunderstanding of artistic intent.

By framing this tale with a loose adaptation of Rashōmon, Kurosawa is able to contrast an expository discourse on narrative with a moral tale of the rejection of evil and the leap of faith to good without heaven-sent Truth and Morality.

One thing I have yet to reconcile is the image of the gate (mon itself means "gate," and the Rajōmon was the outer walled-city or castle gate). Visually, it dominates the bookends of the film, and it was clearly the focus of Akutagawa's vignette. However, Kurosawa admits that he made a lot of artistic compromises because of budget and size—that the gate set was woefully short of his vision. What was his vision? And, like the ghost of the dead man at the end, was he intending something that doesn't necessarily translate across cultures?

For anyone interested in the Japanese versions of all three, here are some links:
Rashōmon » text » public domain film
Yabu no Naka » text