RASHOMON (1950) FILM ANALYSIS

 RASHOMON (1950)

Rashomon is a 1950’s psychological thriller/crime film directed by Akira Kurosawa and working closely with cinematographer Kazuo Miyagawa. This film is famous for its plot device, which involves multiple characters, providing subjective, alternative, selfish, and contradictory versions of the same event. Rashomon is the first Japanese film to gain international recognition. 

The two characters, the noblemen and the noblewoman were going through a forest. Suddenly the Bandit interrupts them, stops them, and then rapes the woman and then the bandit and the woman do something to the nobleman. The nobleman dies, but here we don't really know who killed him. So in the film Rashomon you get to see four different stories of who might have killed the nobleman. This particular thing is also called the “Rashomon Effect”, where the same story is told from four different perspectives and has four different endings.

There’s no way to reconcile these stories. Rashomon is all about multiple perspectives and the irreconcilability of those. "Rashomon" is a deliberately and precisely constructed work of art, in which form and content together create an epistemological problem for the audience.

Under a ruined and abandoned gate outside Kyoto during a time of civil war, a cynical farmer takes refuge from the rain and meets a priest and a woodcutter. Both of them lament about the series of disturbing incidents they had experienced. They told the farmer that they had just arrived from the courtroom, where they testified against a robber who had murdered a samurai and raped his wife. 

The woodcutter claimed to have found the body of the samurai, and the priest said that he passed the samurai and his wife in the forest. But in court, the priest and the woodman heard various testimonies from the raped wife the bandit Tashiomaru, accused of murder and rape, killed (Masayuki Mori).

 Each testimony is different, with only two constant facts: rape and death. Even the murder charges are not consistent. The thief claimed that he deceived the samurai and tied him up, raped his wife in front of her husband, and then dueled her husband at the wife's request and won the victory. In the wife's account, she claimed that her husband laughed at her for allowing her to be raped so easily and killed her husband in fierce revenge. The spirit of the husband showed that his wife agreed to flee with the thief after the rape, but only if the thief killed her husband; the thief refused, and the husband was distraught and committed suicide with his wife's dagger. 

He affirmed that he had seen the bandit plead with the woman to flee with him after the rape. In the woodcutter’s version, the wife responds with indecision, and then demands that the two men duel for her hand. Reluctantly, the men duel and the samurai are killed, but the wife and bandit each run their separate ways in terror. 

Later at the Kyoto gate, none of the men can grasp what any of it means; however, the woodcutter’s admitted presence at the scene brings into question whether or not he stole the dagger from the samurai’s body, perhaps to sell it for a hefty profit. Suddenly, the three men at the gate hear the cry of a baby. The immoral farmer takes the child’s clothes just to sell them and get money for food, but the priest and woodcutter are appalled by this. The priest also tried to stop him but he was already so confused and disenchanted by the testimonies, cannot respond, but the woodcutter intervened. He takes the child into his arms and, just as the rain stops and the sun breaks through the clouds, the woodcutter begins to return home and vows to protect the child.

However, because all the narratives cannot be reconciled, and even the woodcutter’s testimony cannot be reconciled, this film becomes the story of unreliable narrators who are not at all sure about the truth. There is some form of hope at the conclusion of the film, but the extent to which we can believe the woodcutter depends largely on the audience. More than one recommendation, if not all, including the woodcutter, must be fake. 

Considering the opposite possibility of samurai deaths, missing daggers, and many other unsolved problems, not all of these are true. The three involved in the case each confessed and claimed responsibility for the death of the samurai. If the woodcutter who has changed the story stole the samurai's dagger in a shameful way, he might lie again to avoid becoming a thief. This unsolvable uncertainty has always been Rashomon's most fascinating quality.

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