Rashomon

Yesterday afternoon I watched Rashomon, a 1950 movie directed by Akira Kurosawa. It has a simple plot – a woman is raped, and her husband is murdered. But the story is told through the eyes of 4 people, each of which may agree on the fundamental elements of what really happened, but disagree on the details, and on who is the murderer. Because of the differing tales, a latent complexity comes to existence, dealing with the role of perspective on reality, and with the abstract nature of truth. One of the characters – he isn’t involved with the actual crime – claims that “it is human to lie. Most of the time we can’t even be honest to ourselves” and raises the point that “is there anyone who is really good? Maybe goodness is just make-believe?” Of course, Kurosawa toys with this idea by treating the bandit differently through the 4 versions – and the nuances of behavior portray this bandit in different human shades. Setting most of the movie in the woods - quite surreal - helps in creating this (dis)illusion of truth. It may be that “man just wants to forget the bad stuff and believe in the made-up good stuff”, but more insight is gained when one of the characters says “Everyone is selfish and dishonest” only to be immediately repudiated with “And you aren’t?” The unstable nature of truth is mirrored in one of the last statements, “I don’t understand my own soul”, but even with the subjectivity of it all, and the weakness of humanity – such as those that initially made the priest say “I may finally lose my faith in the human soul” – there is still room for hope with the compassion shown in the very last scene.

Anyways ...

posted by Lazarus, 2:34 AM