'Rashomon' - film comments and picspam
Rashomon, directed by Kurosawa Akira, is a classic film that is often mentioned for its storytelling style. It's a tale of murder, rape, truth, and perception filtered through the point of views of four characters. I'd never seen it before, so when I watched it last weekend, I was very intrigued by the film.
This 1950 black and white film begins in rain, a driving rain that forces a man to take shelter in the ruined temple (Rashomon). There, he finds two other men who are waiting out the storm, and during their time together, the central story emerges, told in flashback. I really loved the cinematography, hence the picspam. The film is slow but profound and explores the nature of truth and perception. Each of the three principles, the man, his wife, and their attacker, tell a different version of the events that surrounding the woman's rape and the husband's murder. A fourth person, the wood cutter who finds the first evidence of the struggle, tells his story, but ultimately, by the end of the film, he tells a story that is also different from the other three versions. The director never explicitly tells you which of these four versions is the "true" one because of course who can really know?
The ruined temple of Rashomon
The wood cutter (foreground) and the monk (background)
The husband
The wife's feet. The bandit (below) blames the wind for his attack on the couple - he saw her feet and was drawn to her, and then a wind blew aside her veil so he could witness her beauty which drove him mad with lust.
The bandit.
A brief glimpse of the wife's beauty.
She waits in a clearing while the bandit lures her husband into the forest to attack him.
The wife telling her story to the authorities in the courtyard. I thought it was very interesting that the stories are all told to the camera, as we the audience stand in for the authorities who are hearing the sordid tale.
She spends a lot of time crying in the film.
The medium who "channels" the dead husband to provide his version of the story.
The husband, tied to a tree by the bandit, must witness his wife's rape.
The wife and the bandit.
In one version of the story, the wife asks the bandit to kill her husband so none many know of her disgrace.
The medium.
Near the end of the film, the stranded men at the ruined temple hear a baby crying and they find an abandoned child in a corner.
The monk is very shaken by the awful tale of rape and murder. It makes him doubt whether there is any goodness in humans. But when the woodcutter offers to take the abandoned baby into his own family, it is a sign of hope that there still are good people capable of acts of kindness and generosity (this despite the fact that woodcutter stole the wife's dagger when he came upon the struggle in the forest).
