I’m the one who should be ashamed. I don’t understand my own soul...’
Akira Kurosawa is a giant of Japanese cinema. Seven Samurai, High and Low and Ran are all essential viewing for cinephiles the world over, and it is a testament to his genius that some of those films were released decades apart. His first true masterpiece however, or certainly the first film to gain attention outside of his native Japan, was Rashomon…
Rashomon is ostensibly the story of a raped woman and a murdered man. The ingenuity lies in the fact that each person involved in this sorry tale has a different version of events – and Kurosawa presents us with all of them.
The bandit Tajōmaru claims that he murdered the man, a samurai, after a long and skilled battle to the death. The woman (Machiko Kyō) has a different story. As does a local woodcutter who witnessed the scene (Takashi Shimura) and the murdered samurai (Masayuki Mori) himself – whose story is improbably told through the words of a medium (Noriko Honma). In the end, it is up to a local priest (Minoru Chiaki) to piece together the real story.
A unique and interesting premise then, and one that suffers slightly from seeming confusing right up until the final few moments of the film. The upshot of this is that Rashomon benefits from repeated viewings which is perhaps one of the reasons why it remains so revered (#148 in the IMDB top 250 at the time of writing). It helps that Kurosawa’s direction is typically assured and efficient. Rashomon my lack the scope of some of the Kurosawa’s later epics, but there is no doubting his skill was already secure at this stage of his career. This was his 11th feature film after all.
Rashomon is a philosophical, entertaining film that would work well as an introduction to Kurosawa’s work for the uninitiated. A film that justifies its status among the cinematic greats.