RASHOMON REVIEW & ANALYSIS
- Robin Syversen
- Jun 20, 2019
- 7 min read
Updated: Jul 14
Against all Odds, Rashômon Changed Japanese Film Forever!
Director: Akira Kurosawa
Cast: Toshirô Mifune, Machiko Kyô, Masayuki Mori, Takashi Shimura, Minoru Chiaki
Related films: Seven Samurai, Yojimbo, Harakiri, Three Outlaw Samurai
Studio: Daiei
Year: 1950
Verdict: 5.5/6
Contents:
The Lost Gravity of Rashômon
Rashômon is labeled a classic, but somehow, the gravity of Kurosawa's achievement seems lost on many. The film was made only five years after Japan's surrender in WW2. The country was simultaneously fighting the after-effects of nuclear warfare and adjusting to occupation. It was a time when most people were struggling to keep it together.
The Japanese movie industry was strictly regulated and censored during and after the war. It went from being utilized for national propaganda to being used by the allied forces to promote democracy. Meanwhile, Kurosawa fought to realize his vision, but his creative ideas were met with confusion and disbelief by his crew and production company.
Kurosawa went against the grain and made a film that no one wanted to believe in.
When released in 1950, the Japanese press and the production company (Daiei Film) vastly underestimated Rashômon. Although the movie did okay at the box office, it was pulled from Japanese cinemas only a few weeks later.
Two years later, to everyone's surprise, especially Daiei, Rashômon won the Academy Honorary Award for Most Outstanding Foreign Language Feature. Unfortunately, the studio executives, the actors, and even Kurosawa himself were absent from the festival. Apparently, they had lost all faith in the film's potential.
As it turned out, the time was exactly right for a film that took the notion of timelines and narrative play to the next level. Rashômon was an instant hit that made audiences worldwide take an interest in Japanese cinema.
Rashômon Facts for New Audiences
Rashômon was made by Akira Kurosawa and released in 1950. It stars Kurosawa's signature actor, Toshirô Mifune. Rashômon was the fifth movie that the two of them collaborated on. In 1952, the film won an Academy Award for «most outstanding foreign language film».
Rashômon is a significant part of Japanese film history. It challenged the filmmaking norms of its time, but it also made Japanese cinema popular overseas. As such, Rashômon expanded the horizons of Japanese cinema and the art of movie-making itself in one fell swoop.
A Pioneering Japanese Film Production
That the film was misunderstood is just as understandable as the fact that it won the award. Rashômon was decades ahead of its time. Perhaps for this reason, it continues to amaze new audiences to this day. The approach to storytelling was so confusing to the film team that it led to quarrels between Kurosawa and his disgruntled production assistants.
The point was just as much about how the story was presented as the content itself. Kurosawa tried to explain that life is not always certain and that many stories end without a clear-cut answer to the questions at hand.
The concept of open-ended storytelling was foreign, to say the least, and opposition to free-spirited thinking is not hard to imagine in postwar Japan. The film industry was, after all, just another industry, and the rapidly increasing Japanese capitalism was greased by compliance and rigidity.
Rashomon was an uphill battle from the get-go, but before long, it ended up astounding the whole world.
So outlandish did the story appear that the head of the film studio decided to remove his name from the credits. It probably didn't help much that Toshirô Mifune's acting antics, no matter how exceptional, were unpolished, free-spoken, and in stark contrast to the Japanese acting standards of its time.
The cinematography was innovative, the score was unusual, and the narrative had a nonlinear approach. Flashbacks were not unheard of, but to build an entire movie around them was preposterous.
Four versions of the same incident were presented, and essential details were changed each time. Each «participant» in the horrible crime tells the story differently; it is up to the viewer to decide which details they want to believe or not.
The Stories in Rashômon
The story itself was also controversial for its time. It tells the tale of a married couple who encounter a strange wanderer in the forest. What happens thereafter is a mystery. The only thing certain is that the husband meets his demise.
From the very first scene, the audience is given hints about the confusing nature of the tale, as a woodcutter and a priest appear dumbfounded by the «courtroom» trial they just took part in. The woodcutter then continues to tell the entire story from recollection, starting with the discovery of a murdered man.
The layers of time become more intricate when the characters in the woodcutter's story also give their respective testimonies in retrospect. The thief, the wife, the witness, and the deceased husband (through the voice of a medium) retell the story from their point of view. Everyone tries to bend the truth to lose as little honor as possible.
Rashômon Analysis | Between the Bamboo Trunks
Time appears to be a key concept in Rashômon. It is never addressed directly, but it fuels the tension throughout the movie. Suspense is built by jumping back and forth in time. Discussions get heated by different perceptions of time, and timelines offer subjective points of view, which in turn challenge the viewers to take an objective stand.
Between the lines is a commentary on the human condition. None of the testimonies are similar, and all the stories are subjective. The truth lies hidden in the past and will never be revealed. All stories are distorted by personal opinions or self-serving motives. Can we even trust our own judgment, or is it also colored by our experiences and viewpoints?
Donald Richie takes this one step further by arguing that the subjective views of the four witnesses are, in fact, all true. They are the perceptions of the situation from four viewpoints, and they all believe their version to be true. As such, reality itself is questioned, not the human condition or the obfuscated causality of the heinous crime in the bamboo grove.
The concept of time certainly changed in postwar Japan. The modernization of the war-torn country was faster than any upraise in any country in modern times. Family life was sacrificed, and leisure time was abolished to the benefit of the «common good». The subjective experience of time passing by might very well have appeared as distorted as the timelines in Rashômon.
The Influence of Rashômon…
Rashômon's immediate success after winning the Academy Award changed the annals of film history. Kurosawa opened the box and changed movie-making trends forever after. Toying with timelines rapidly became the pastime of any director seeking to explore the boundaries of the film medium.
Today, retrospective narratives have become mainstream. They are a common cinematic tool for maintaining suspense with unexpected twists and turns. Fight Club (David Fincher, 1999), Memento (Christopher Nolan, 2000), Snatch (Guy Richie, 2000), Sin City (Robert Rodriguez, 2005), and Shutter Island (Martin Scorsese, 2009), to mention a few, are all examples of narratives à la Rashômon in modern cinema.
Perhaps the most notable connection is between Rashômon and Pulp Fiction (Quentin Tarantino, 1994). Tarantino has openly acknowledged being influenced by Japanese cinema. Pulp Fiction made him a household name, and like Rashômon, it definitely contributed to mainstreaming narrative playfulness.
… and Kurosawa's Influences
However, let's not forget to give credit where credit is due. Kurosawa deserves accolades for bringing international attention to the above-mentioned film techniques, but he also openly acknowledged his influences.
Author Ryûnosuke Akutagawa, who wrote the novels that inspired the film (Rashômon, 1914, and In A Grove, 1922), directly inspired the narrative play displayed by Kurosawa. In this sense, he didn't really come up with anything unique.
That said, applying such ideas in filmmaking was a tricky process. A director's job is much more constrictive than an author's. The filmmaker has to fabricate every visual detail, whereas the author can leave much up to the reader's imagination. As for visualizing nonlinear storytelling, Kurosawa arguably did it more elegantly than any director before him.
In addition, it is no secret that Kurosawa was heavily influenced by American cinema. This is arguably part of the reason many of his samurai films became so accessible globally. It is also why many Japanese film critics voiced their dislike of Rashômon and its "non-Japaneseness".
Final Verdict | Rashômon Review
The unique nature of Rashômon stems from the blending of two main sources of inspiration: Japanese traditional literature on the one hand and American contemporary cinema on the other. In the hands of a truly inspired director, these influences were mixed and made into a film that beat all odds.
Kurosawa's play with timelines was ahead of its time. Arguably, time is the key factor that made the film stand the test of time.
One thing is certain: Rashômon will never go out of style. Against expectations, it grabbed the world's attention and forever changed Japanese cinema. It is essential viewing for anyone interested in the history of Japanese cinema. A better introduction to classic Japanese films can hardly be found.
References
Film-Philosophy: The Radical Capability of Rashômon
Journal of Japanese and Korean Cinema: Film style and narration in Rashômon
Prince, Steven: The First Films of Akira Kurosawa
Redfern, Nick: Film style and narration in Rashômon
Sesonske, Alexander: Rashomon