Rashomon

A word from your not-so-friendly neighborhood Scribe:

This next review is our first one to feature a "guest reviewer," namely American Guy, the Frank Zappa lookalike whose cowardly hatred of the current presidential administration caused him to run like a lil bitch to the Great Land of Oz. All without ever consulting me to see if I might need a like-minded person to lean on from time to time! But whatever, he's good people. Good bi-sexual people.

So the brothers blood decided to review the film "Rashomon," one of those bloated Kurosawa epics that tests one's faith in God or fate by slowly plodding through some long-winded diatribe about the human condition and honor and loyalty. It'll probably shock you to learn I didn't want to review this'n, and so the torch was passed temporarily to AG. Next time, I promise, we will get a little threesome action goin'. Without further ado, AG is up first:

American Guy's review:

First of all, thanks to the boys for the invite to do a guest review. This has long been one of my favourite films, which is why I suggested our two sages should give it a go. Little did I know they’d throw it back at me asking me to talk about it as well.

At its core, this is a film about the nature of truth. A woman is raped and her husband (a samurai) is murdered. In trying to determine what actually happened, the police interview all involved: a local peasant who found the body, the notorious bandit who raped the woman, the woman and (through a spirit medium) the victim himself. The four parties all have contradictory stories as to how the events unfolded, and they all are true from their perspective (the woman portrays herself as virtuous; the bandit, brave and fierce…). Yet the question remains as to which one of them is relaying what really happened. If they are lying, it’s clear that their lies are to themselves – which then become their truth.

If you want easy answers and a nice tidy ending, this may not be the film for you. This is Akira Kurosawa in 1950 Japan after all, not Hollywood. As with many other folk, Kurosawa was my first exposure to Japanese film, and frankly, he really has to rate up there as one of the world’s best. I first saw this film at university nearly 20 years ago for an anthropology class, and though I had not actually watched it again until now, it made a tremendous impression on me.

(Off-topic side note: George Lucas often cites Kurosawa as one of his biggest influences, and many elements of Star Wars owe a direct debt to the work of the Japanese filmmaker.)

I've been trying to get Green to check Rashomon out for a few years now, what with our ongoing discussions about god and nature and all. This is a great cautionary tale for anyone who thinks there’s such a thing as absolute truth. The film’s point is that all truth is relative. While each of the players are obviously lying about at least part of their experiences, they’re also telling the truth as it relates to them. To quote from the Moody Blues: "just what truth is, I can’t say any more."

Which brings me to my next point: If any of this sounds familiar, it’s because this story and all its themes have been borrowed from extensively over the years, in everything from Star Trek to The Usual Suspects. Even if you’ve never seen or even heard of Rashomon before, you’ve felt its influence.

From a technical perspective, the film is brilliant as well. Shot in glorious, beautiful black and white, the film makes superb use of light and shadow, not just to set the mood, but as part of the storytelling itself. The sets are minimalist to the extreme, consisting only of a damaged gate (the Rashomon of the title), a forest glen, and the police station - portrayed as an almost blindly white open space with little more than the actors sitting on open ground. And the character portrayal – wow. The bandit, as played by Toshiro Mifune (who some of you may remember from the TV miniseries Shogun – for which he was Emmy nominated) was absolutely brilliant. He was maniacal, almost inhuman. Yet at the same time honourable, and even compassionate. Had this been an English language film, he would have been a shoe in for an Oscar.

The whole film was shot on the cheap (apparently the studio wasn’t sure it would work), but doesn’t suffer for it in the slightest. Kurosawa’s mastery and innovation (he pioneered several film techniques that have become standard today) more than carried it through.

I don’t like the whole star rating system; it seems a shame to confine such an extraordinary film to such a mundane framework. So I’ll give this film 5 pineapples out of 5.


Green's Review:

AG did a nice job in his review, didn't he? Despite that and the fact that AG has accused me of being "Rain Man"-like in my ability to remember even the smallest of details of past conversations, I have no recollection of him ever pitching to me that I watch this movie. And I knew him long before our days at our respective universities. I won't even tell him that I fell asleep on the film several times and had to keep rewinding the grainy, choppy VHS tape in order to not miss anything.

(A side note: I wonder if AG remembers the film we watched at the campus cinema when I visited him at his university for a weekend. I remember the name of the film but not much about the film itself, such an impression it left on me.)

Anyway, I digress:

He did such a nice job that I won't bother to rehash his plot synopsis, debate the historical significance of Kirosawa nor the technical merits of this film on modern cinema as we know it.

What I do disagree with is the existence (or lack thereof) of absolute truth vs. personal viewpoint.

This film correctly raises the question of what really happened in the glen. We are left to wonder which of the four witnesses is telling the truth and which three are lying. Or is there a nugget of truth in what each viewpoint has to offer? Either way you slice it, there IS an absolute truth to be found here. It's just that the film is designed, (hear that?) designed to make us wonder and leave us hanging, therefore making us doubt the existence of absolute truth. A doubt that AG has fallen for hook, line and sinker. Sadly, many others, too have fallen with him.

A personal perspective on the other hand enables you to have divergent viewpoints but retain the core truth. For example, I could say to you that my family and I went to Florida for a week of vacation. I could also say to you that I went to Florida, but not tell you why. Further still, I could say to you that my family went on vacation. Finally I could say to you that a bunch of us just got back from Florida, not mentioning who went, why we went or how long we stayed.

Each of the four examples above is equally true in its context and point of view and in each case certain details were omitted. These details add supplement to the narrative (or put meat on the bones as I like to say) but don't diminish in the slightest the absolute truth at the core of each statement.

I digress again:

The film doesn't get a perfect score from me simply because of the addition of the baby scenes toward the end of the film. The existence of the baby is never mentioned in the body of the film until it haphazardly appears in the closing scenes. The baby is totally unnecessary and serves no purpose whatsoever in resolving the dilemma of the film. I also think it's rather cheesy to have had to incorporate a "spirit medium" just to have the fourth viewpoint added in, when three perspectives would have sufficed to tell the story just as well.

**** out of *****