{"id":28002,"date":"2013-04-29T23:06:55","date_gmt":"2013-04-30T07:06:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/?p=28002"},"modified":"2013-05-01T15:51:50","modified_gmt":"2013-05-01T23:51:50","slug":"rashomon-akira-kurosawa-1950-japan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/?p=28002","title":{"rendered":"Rashomon (Akira Kurosawa, 1950): Japan"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reviewed by Kathleen Amboy<\/a>.\u00a0 Viewed on DVD.<\/p>\n

\"\"\u00a0 Three days ago, while strolling through the forest, a woodcutter (Takashi Shimura) discovers a woman’s hat strewn over a\u00a0branch.\u00a0 Ambling on,\u00a0in motion\u00a0to the non-diegetic drum beat,\u00a0as bright\u00a0sunlight cuts\u00a0through the trees, he\u00a0approaches a crime scene, and to his horror, it is the body of a murdered samurai.<\/p>\n

\"\"\u00a0 Prior to that, on the same day, a priest (Minoru Chiaki) was journeying along the road to Yamashina, and passed a veiled damsel upon a white horse, which was led by\u00a0a very pleasant samurai, with sword and arrows at his side.\u00a0 He\u00a0surmises that “a human life is truly as frail and fleeting as the morning dew.”<\/p>\n

\"\"\u00a0 Two days prior,\u00a0the\u00a0well-known Tajomaru (Toshiro Mifune)\u00a0was caught, and found in his possession were several arrows, “a leather bow, and a [white] horse.”\u00a0 According to this\u00a0notorious\u00a0bandit, it was the stirring of the wind which caused him to trick the\u00a0samurai and rape\u00a0his wife.\u00a0 But as luck would have it, he had “succeeded in having her without killing\u00a0her husband,” because she encouraged him.\u00a0 His original\u00a0intent was\u00a0to walk away, but she begged him, out of shame,\u00a0to take her husband’s life,\u00a0wherein\u00a0both men\u00a0fought valiantly, crossing swords “23 times.”<\/p>\n

\"\"\u00a0 An entirely different account of the ordeal is submitted by the samurai’s wife (Machiko Kyo).\u00a0 The bandit forced her “to yield to him,” after mocking and humiliating her\u00a0restrained husband.\u00a0 After\u00a0he strode away, cackling to himself, she embraced her husband and hurriedly\u00a0attempted to release him, until his “cold light of loathing” unhinged her.<\/p>\n

\"\"\u00a0 Hypnotically swaying to and fro, his eyes followed every move, while\u00a0she desperately tried to avoid\u00a0the cold-hearted\u00a0gaze, that contained “neither anger nor sorrow” from her beloved.\u00a0 Becoming hysterical, she pleaded with her husband (Masayuki Mori) to beat her or kill her, but to not\u00a0glare\u00a0at her “like that,”\u00a0until finally she demanded that he “stop!”<\/p>\n

\"\"\u00a0 A psychic medium\u00a0was then\u00a0brought forth on behalf of the dead husband,\u00a0whereby his voice of pain\u00a0testified from the grave, that\u00a0Tajomaru\u00a0suggested to\u00a0his wife that they run\u00a0off\u00a0together.\u00a0 Pointing back at her husband, while\u00a0“in a trance,” she responded “take me wherever you want [but] please kill him!”<\/p>\n

Rashomon<\/em><\/a>\u00a0is Kyoto’s dilapidated city gate, and a temporary shelter for three men (a priest, a woodcutter, and a commoner), who sit around a warm fire during a torrential downpour.\u00a0 While\u00a0dissecting the recent events, truths are revealed and distortions ripped apart, with every piece of kindling, ripped from the city gate and thrown into the fire.<\/p>\n

As the rain pours, different versions come flooding out.\u00a0 The priest and woodcutter remain dumbfounded by the courthouse testimonies they recently witnessed, and re-tell the proceedings\u00a0to the commoner, who nonchalantly claims “it’s human to lie.”<\/p>\n

Rashomon<\/em> is a tale of light and darkness, truth and lies, but the light and truth are subjective.\u00a0 With diffused lighting at the gate, and hard light at the courthouse, faces\u00a0curiously change, in the\u00a0evasive light and shadow of\u00a0the woods, under variable testimonies\u00a0of the crime.<\/p>\n

Kurosawa’s\u00a0camera observes\u00a0each point of view with variant discretion – the wife’s beauty is luminous when the bandit catches his first few glimpses of her, and likewise the priest\u00a0has a favorable first impression of the samurai\u00a0as they pass on the road, however once the bandit has accomplished his dire deed, the wife suddenly\u00a0takes on a\u00a0cheap disposition, and the husband a distinctly cruel look.<\/p>\n

A truly\u00a0unforgettable scene occurs during the wife’s flashback.\u00a0 Beginning with an over-the-shoulder shot, the camera is choreographed to the wife’s highly dramatic (Kabuki style) movements, as she sways back and forth, trying desperately to avoid her husband’s betrayed, fixed glare.\u00a0 Eventually coming full circle, in a 360 degree move, we too are suddenly subjected to the samurai’s loathsome glare,\u00a0as the entire scene builds in drama, while the background repetitive musical score – not unlike Ravel’s Bolero<\/em> –\u00a0builds in crescendo.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reviewed by Kathleen Amboy.\u00a0 Viewed on DVD. \u00a0 Three days ago, while strolling through the forest, a woodcutter (Takashi Shimura) discovers a woman’s hat strewn over a\u00a0branch.\u00a0 Ambling on,\u00a0in motion\u00a0to the non-diegetic drum beat,\u00a0as bright\u00a0sunlight cuts\u00a0through the trees, he\u00a0approaches a crime scene, and to his horror, it is the body of a murdered samurai. \u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[187,67,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28002","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-criterion-collection","category-dvd","category-films"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28002","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/49"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=28002"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28002\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28002"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28002"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28002"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}