We’re going to have to agree to disagree about this. However, I agree that Seven Samurai is better than Rashomon. OP, see that instead. Then go back and watch Rashomon and (at the risk of sounding all my-favorite-band-is-more-obscure-than-yours) Dersu Uzula
Maybe this is why I liked it so much. Did you see it at the Loews Jersey, too?
I have faith you’ll try harder.
I haven’t seen Roshomon, but I can highly recommend The Hidden Fortress it is fun and accessible and you can see where Lucas borrowed many ideas for Star Wars
As was said, its a great movie. Its been years since I’ve seen it but.
Its artsy,
Its foreign,
You have to pay attention to follow it,
Its plot has more to do with what is happening internal to the characters than external.
If your idea of a great movie is Die Hard, you may be disappointed. This is a little like reading Henry James - of the people who will give it a shot, there are plenty of people who love it, probably more people who have read it because they ought, to some people its leaves the “I don’t get what was so great” feeling, and to others it remains uncomprehensible.
(It strikes me that it would be a good double feature with The Seventh Seal - although I’m not sure why…)
Ok, I just watched it. I was underwhelmed until the last retelling with the guy who found the body at which point alot of it started coming together. I thought is was a good movie all in all. Especially considering how old it is and it being the first movie to use the multiple perspectives thing. I thought it got pretty dumb in the last 5 minutes with the stupid baby plot line that really didn’t need to be there at all. I also didn’t care for the wife’s constant screaming.
Am I right in thinking that everyone was lieing? The wife lied the worst and the guy at the end told the “most true” version?
There’s no way that rain was real is there? It was raining so hard that it didn’t look real but I couldn’t see anywhere in the frame that didn’t look like it wasn’t getting rained on.
If you can, get a copy of this book, with the movie script and essays on it, which I recommended above:
As the essays point out, there is a very significant difference between the Akutagawa story “In the Grove” upon which the movie is based and the movie itself – the character played by Toshiro Mifune, the thief, was described as a very proper and elegant character who falls in with the couple and is accepted naturally by them as an upper-class travelling companion, and perfectly safe. That’s how he made his living as a highwayman – by being able to be accepted, then to pounce on his unsiuspecting victims. By contrast, in the film the thief is clearly an outre figure, not at all the elegant person he is in the story. The argument is that he has been changed to reflect the situation when the film was made – less than ten years after the second world war, with an American army of occupation in place. The thief is a barbarian, in many ways not unlike the American barbarians who have intruded into Japanese life. Or he is one of the types who have lead the country into its then-current state of affairs. In any event, things are topsy-turvy because japan has lost its integrity, and its 'Japaneseness", and the husband’s following the thief in search of some sort of treasure instead of ontinuing steadfastly on with his wife is another symptom of this. Things won’t be right until people begin to act properly. This the woodcutter does (jn distinction to the others, who steal the baby’s belongings) by adopting the child and promising to rear it himself. This is proper virtue, in spite of his earlier lying about the events he saw in the Grove (and his stealing of the knife, which he doesn’t report), and he leaves out into the rainless day.
Rain in movies is usually artificial, by the way – filmmakers hate things they can’t control, like the direction or intensity of the rain. When you see rain in films (except for rare cases like some scenes in Jurassic Park), there’s a hose somewhere not far off camera and apparatus for rain.
No, for Kurosawa, the baby is absolutely necessary. Of course, it’s a tacked-on ending, but it’s something he needed to say. In essentially all of Kurosawa’s movies, he shows a great deal of how ugly humans can be, but there is always hope, people always have the potential to be good and honest. The stranger in Yojimbo, the doctor in Red Beard, the Samurai in 7 Samurai, the lead characters in Ikiru and High and Low. Dreams shows visions of apocalypse but ends on a hopeful note. There are only a few exception, like The Bad Sleep Well, where there seems there is no hope at all. If he had ended the movie before the baby scene, the message we would be left is: “you can’t trust anything anyone says.” By adding this ending he shows us that it is actions, not words that speak of our true character.
The rain was coming from three fire trucks. At one point during the shooting, they exhausted the town’s water supply and they had to use clever lighting tricks and sound effects instead.
L.A.
Call me silly, but I think both Rashomon AND Die Hard are great movies.
In an aside: I see the Firefox spell-checker recommends “Homonyms” for “Rashomon.” Rather fitting.