Japanese Film Greats – Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon
Japanese Director’s Exploration of Truth is Foreign Film Classic
Oct 21, 2009
The recipient of many awards after it first appeared in the West at the Venice Film Festival in 1951, including the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, Rashomon is one of Kurosawa’s most notable films both for its innovative direction and its groundbreaking cinematography by Kazuo Miyagawa.
Kurosawa's Skillful Use of Archetype and Flashback
Set at a remote gateway in a wooded area - the “Rashomon” of the title - the film depicts the account of a crime from four different perspectives: that of a woodcutter who witnesses it; a Samurai who is murdered; his wife who is either raped or consents to a seduction; and a bandit who is either manipulated into murdering the warrior or does it brazenly. The story is only told in flashback and the viewer is left to decide who is telling the truth.
As if to underscore the theme of the subjectivity of truth, the director creates a further distancing framework by opening the film with a dialogue between a priest and a vagabond who takes shelter from a downpour at the gate. The priest serves not only to introduce the story but to comment on the moral failures of humankind, while the vagabond represents the baser instincts of man.
Kurosawa’s Innovative Shooting Style
Set to the incessant drumming of the rain, (made all the more dramatic by the use of colored water to heighten the contrast between rain and sky), this opening scene sets the stage for the deceptions Kurosawa works in each scene. Just as we are led to believe that the filming is taking place in a real downpour, so the wooded setting is underscored by the skillful filming of shadows of leaves on Mifune’s face as he dozes under a tree.
The most effective of such techniques in this film, and the most innovative for the time, is the way Kurosawa shot directly into the sun through the dappled leaves. Unheard of at the time, Kurosawa’s repeated shots of the sun seem to hint at the underlying truth of things, bright as sunlight but hidden by the leaves of self-interest and self-preservation and seen only fleetingly.
Though the style may appear overly dramatic to modern-day viewers in the West - the gleeful gloating of Mifune, for example, or the prostrate despair of the female lead, Machiko Kyo - the acting, with its broad strokes and stylized gestures, evokes scenes from a Kabuki play. The sheer beauty of the gestures, such as Kyo’s white fingers classically spread to cup her face, or Mifune’s defiant, animal stance, transform many frames into compositions of grace in their own right.
Kurosawa and Ozu – Contrasting Themes and Directorial Styles
Unlike the domestic dramas of Yasujiro Ozu with their formalistic and static scenes and highly civilized and controlled behaviors, Rashhomon takes the viewers out into the wooded and dangerous countryside where the characters give way to their passions.
And where Ozu’s characters keep a distance from the viewer, remaining fixed and apart in their roles, Kurosawa has his actors face the camera as if to submit to the judgment of the viewers.
While Kurosawa’s device of relating the story from the conflicting perspectives of four witnesses highlights the films emphasis on universal human traits and weaknesses, rather than on more purely Japanese themes such as the transitory nature of existence, or the ephemeral nature of beauty, Rashomon is yet a film that provides a rich perspective not only on traditional Japan with its rigid class hierarchy but on the universal human struggle with truth and the good.
This is a must-see film for anyone aspiring to an appreciation of world-class cinema. The Criterion edition with commentary is highly recommended.
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