Rash�mon (1950)
Genre:
Crime / Drama / Mystery / Thriller (more)
Plot Outline: A heinous crime and its aftermath are recalled from differing points of view. (more)
User Comments:
I saw it with my own eyes!
(more)
User Rating:
 
8.5/10 (14,347 votes)
top 250: #57
Also Known As:
In the Woods
Rasho-Mon (USA) (alternative spelling)
Rashomon (Japan) (alternative transliteration)
Runtime:
88 min
Country:
Japan
Language:
Japanese
Color:
Black and White
Sound Mix:
Mono (Western Electric Recording)
Certification:
Argentina:16 / Canada:G (Quebec) / Chile:18 / Finland:K-16 / Spain:13 / Sweden:15 / Switzerland:14 / UK:12 / UK:X (original rating) / USA:Unrated / West Germany:16 / USA:PG-13 / Singapore:PG
Trivia:
This film is often given credit for the first time a camera was pointed directly at the sun. In Kurosawa's biography, he gives credit to his cinematographer for "inventing" it and himself for using it, but years later, during commentary that preceded the TV showing of the film, the head of the studio claimed credit, which Kurosawa bitterly denies.
(more)
Quotes:
Woodcutter:
I'm the one who should be ashamed. I don't understand my own soul.
(more)
Awards:
Nominated for Oscar.
Another 7 wins
&
2 nominations
(more)
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User Comments:
20 out of 21 people found the following comment useful:-
I saw it with my own eyes!, 5 June 2005
Author:
mungo39 from United Kingdom
This fabulous work was years and years ahead of its time when it was
made in 1950, being a work of art that engages the eyes and the ears,
but most essentially, the brain. The film is both aesthetically
beautiful, using amazing camera techniques, extensive periods of
silence and a very limited cast to deliver the action, and the story is
typically Japanese...ostensibly amazingly simple, but complex to the
point of sending you cross-eyed!
The basic tale is this: a woman and her husband, a Samurai, are
travelling through a forest when they meet a bandit. The bandit has sex
with the woman and the Samurai ends up dead. That's it. This tale is
related to us through the woodcutter and a monk who saw the
protagonists give their evidence to the police (the dead Samurai
through a medium), but unfortunately the three tales conflict with one
another. Each confessor says that they killed the Samurai, and then we
hear from the woodcutter who in fact witnessed the event, who gives us
a version of events that borrows from each individual account, and is
still less credible!
The conclusion presented by Kurosawa seems to be firstly that
individuals see things from different perspectives, but secondly, and
most importantly, that there is no objective truth. There is no answer
as to what took place in the forest, and Kurosawa offers us no way of
knowing what went on. Each story is as credible as the other, and so no
conclusion about guilt can be reached. We even have to think at the end
that as the whole thing is reported to us by the woodcutter and priest,
was there any truth in anything we heard at all?
This film leads to an especially tricky conclusion for a movie-goer!
Your eyes are supposed to show you objective truth, but they don't. The
camera is supposed not to lie, but it does. I feel that the simple
message is that subjectivity lies at the heart of life, and this
subjectivity needs to be recognised before any attempt is made to
understand events.
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