Rashomon: Gorgeous Masterpiece, Filmic Poetry review

Share

Tom Elce writes about his favorite film Akira Kurosawa's 1950 masterpiece Rashoman

Akira Kurosawa's superlative Rashômon might just be one of the greatest motion pictures ever made. The miraculous work of a filmmaker whose standing as one of cinema's great visionaries is unquestionable, this beautiful ode to silent film gorgeously translates the key elements of that era (the close-up facial shots especially) while covering new ground, recently revisited with lumbering effect by the mediocre Vantage Point. The film has inspired countless subsequent ones, its expertly-utilised multi-narrative tactics and wavering between characters' points of view divisive when originally released to Japanese audiences and critics, yet exactly the sort of style that has made Kurosawa's gorgeous masterpiece as adored as it is in the modern day. This is filmic poetry.

Mostly it's further evidence to support the case that Akira Kurosawa is one of the most extraordinary filmmakers to have ever sat in the director's chair. In a superlative filmography that also boasts the universally adored Seven Samurai, Rashômon is this observer's favourite, a series of meticulously orchestrated scenes meeting classical acting meeting ahead-of'-it's-time cinematography meeting everything else that goes into a great film. Kurosawa's career, which spans over fifty years, is one of the most extraordinary for a director of all-time. With back-to-back works of excellence included in his resume, he favourably stands alongside the likes of Hitchcock, Bergman and so many other luminaries.

In Rashômon, Kurosawa takes a supposedly simple plot and plays with it over the course of an organic eighty-eight minutes. The tale is told in flashbacks, not so much piecing together the story surrounding the alleged rape of a woman (Machiko Kyo) and the murder of her accompanying man (Masayuki Mori) by a bandit (Toshiro Mifune) as it does conversely portray it. There are four narrators to the flashbacks used, the film alternately switching between them as the lines between truth and lies becomes increasingly blurred, the idea of piecing together an entirely cohesive breakdown of what "really happened" something you simply don't do with it.

Rashômon is first and foremost about one's inability to unquestionably know the truth of matters, the questions surrounding human nature and unwarranted deception. Among the people contributing to the fractured narrative, a woodcutter (Takashi Shimura) and a priest (Minoru Chiaki) most obviously present these questions. Played by the two actors to fittingly incredible effect, they represent the confused masses of people who nowadays respond to catastrophes both small and large by asking questions and desperately trying to piece together the facts. Their story, as it happens, becomes arguably as much a feature to Rashômon as the story inspiring them is.

The purported criminal proudly talks of killing the man but dismisses the alleged rape as consensual. The woman says she was raped and then indicates she was the killer of the man. Then the woodcutter, who claims to have been a witness, mixes it up even further, suggesting rape and suicide instead. These characters contradict each other, leading you to believe either that the woman is trying to save face, the bandit has a warped sense of morality for denying one element but admitting the other or that the woodcutter didn't see anything whatsoever. As the observer to all their stories, we don't necessarily know who to trust or why we'd trust them ahead of the other parties anyway. It's a fascinating achievement from writer-director Kurosawa, whose film-in-question brings to mind something Hitchcock once said, that he enjoys playing the audience like a piano.

By this point, I need not talk about the quality of each performer's contribution to the acting. Simply put, I see everything that goes into this film as genuinely perfect to the film. Rashômon is undoubtedly one of the most inspired pictures ever made, a trend-setter for the multi-narrative feature in the same way as Breathless (another contender for my last author's pick) was to crime films. Seen all of fifty-eight years after its initial creation, the film still remains oddly fresh, a heartfelt and authentic film whose contradictions are intended rather than accidental as some were in the more artificial, aforesaid Vantage Point.

Going into this film to piece together the truth of the matter is fruitless. By the end we still aren't sure what exactly happened. Yet we know this film is a masterwork, the ultimate usage of simple settings (the minimalist set is comprised of three places: woodlands, Rashômon gate and a courtyard) and a loving ode to silent film among its many innovations. Werner Herzog (himself one of the strongest directors of our time) once said that the film is about as close to perfect as can be achieved in cinema, something that, discounting so many great films as it does, I'd come close to totally agreeing with.