Rashomon Restored
No matter how clear the sound and image are, the plot remains ambiguous
By Andy Klein
Rashomon was not only the film that brought director Akira Kurosawa (and star Toshiro Mifune) to attention outside of Asia, but the first work by any Japanese filmmaker to make an international splash after World War II. So it’s fitting that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is kicking off its Kurosawa retrospective with a restored print of this 1950 classic.
It’s rare that any film’s title becomes permanently ensconced in the language, let alone a foreign film: yet, describe something as “one of those Rashomon situations,” and a fair number of Americans (only a fraction of whom will have ever seen the movie) will know exactly what you mean – “he says one thing, she says another, the third guy says something else, and who knows what reality is anyway?” That the concept has been invoked more than once on TV (on The Simpsons and The X-Files, for instance) says something about how deeply it’s infiltrated the culture.
The “story” is short and simple: a samurai named Takehiro (Masayuki Mori) and his pretty wife Masago (Machiko Kyo) are riding through the woods. A notorious thief named Tajomaru (Toshiro Mifune) gets a glimpse of Masago and decides he must possess her. He lures Takehiro to another part of the forest and, getting the jump on him, ties him up. He then brings Masago to the same spot and rapes her in front of her husband. None of this is disputed, though little of it can be confirmed, either.
What happens next is less clear, however. All we know is that, shortly thereafter, Takehiro has been stabbed to death; Masago has disappeared; and Tajomaru has been arrested with Takehiro’s horse and weapons in his possession.
Who killed Takehiro? Why did Masago run away? What went on among the three after the rape?
A trial is held, at which testimony is heard from the woodcutter (Takashi Shimura) who found the body; a priest (Minoru Chiaki), who had seen the couple earlier; Tajumaro; Masago; and even the ghost of the victim, who testifies through a female medium (Fumiko Honma). The first three witnesses speak rather briefly; Tajumaru is the only one who tells the whole story; both Masago and Takehiro’s spirit only tell what happened after the rape, and their accounts flatly contradict Tajumaru and each other.
Even the trial is not presented to us directly: We merely see and hear it through flashbacks, as the woodcutter and the priest describe it to a stranger (Kichijiro Ueda), so the events are doubly in doubt ... for me. Triply for you (if you haven’t seen the film), since you have no way of knowing whether I’m distorting the plot ... or simply making it up.
In the standard mystery film, we’d find out at the end what really happened. Because even the apparent “solution” (as offered in one final flashback) is debunked within the film, Rashomon is most often interpreted as suggesting that the absolute truth can never be determined and may not even exist. But Kurosawa, according to his own description of his intentions, was not primarily concerned with the fact that it’s difficult or even impossible to establish objective truth, but with the reason for that difficulty: “Human beings are unable to be honest with themselves about themselves,” he wrote in his 1982 Something Like an Autobiography. “They cannot talk about themselves without embellishing. This script portrays such human beings – the kind who cannot survive without lies to make them feel they are better people than they really are.”
It is a tribute to Rashomon’s lasting power that, after 58 years, it continues to stimulate fresh, lively argument. It is also a tribute that it has spawned so many imitators. Besides the “official” remakes – including Martin Ritt’s 1964 western The Outrage and Hiroaki Yoshida’s 1991 Iron Maze – its influence has been huge, from Stanley Kubrick’s 1956 The Killing to Back to the Future 2 (1990), The Usual Suspects (1995), and Christopher Nolan’s Memento (2001).
At least, that’s the way I see it.
Rashomon. Directed by Akira Kurosawa. Screenplay by Akira Kurosawa & Shinobu Hashimoto; based on the short stories “Rashomon” and “In a Grove” by Ryunosuke Akutagawa. With Toshiro Mifune, Machiko Kyo, Masayuki Mori, Takashi Shimura, Minoru Chiaki, Kichijiro Ueda, Fumiko Honma, and Daisuke Kato. Screens Thursday at 8 at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, 8949 Wilshire Boulevard, Beverly Hills; followed by a panel discussion with critic Kenneth Turan, and Kurosawa’s collaborators, friends, and family.
Published: 09/17/2008
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